


What Happened in Berkshire

by wordsbymeganmichael



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Cursed Captain Hook | Killian Jones, F/M, Statue Killian, Supernatural Elements, Witch Emma Swan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-07-18 00:14:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19965559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordsbymeganmichael/pseuds/wordsbymeganmichael
Summary: When Emma’s boyfriend leaves her for the woman he’s been cheating with, she accepts an offer from her hospital to move to England. While she is out celebrating her thirtieth birthday with her friends before they head back to America, she drunkenly kisses the statue of Captain Hook in front of Eton College, and he comes to life. Together, he and Emma try to figure out what this curse means for them by searching for the witch that cursed him in the first place — are they really True Love, as he wants to believe they are, or did Emma’s magic go awry?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello from lovely Ireland! I'm so excited to finally be sharing this story with all of you -- it all started with this post: https://write-it-motherfuckers.tumblr.com/post/182219876012/thejollyroger-writer-write-it-motherfuckers and it's grown into this beautiful, monstrous two-shot about magic and True Love and tight pants and magic. Thanks to the always-lovely CSSNS mods AGAIN for hosting events like this one, that allow us to roll with all the weirdness that comes to us -- without you, we certainly wouldn't have this story.  
> Also, check out Merediths amazing art for this story and many others! Somehow she is always able to capture the ideas floating around in my head and pin them down long enough to make aesthetics.

Emma Swan does not get stupid drunk. 

Usually. 

Most of the time, she can down a few beers, a mixed drink or three, and even after adding a few shots in there, she can still have full memory in the morning. Besides, getting _that_ drunk usually means losing control of her magic, and while the time she made it snow in August in their sweltering apartment or when she procured a mini fireworks display in the palm of her hand were both fun, it’s never been something she felt comfortable doing, always waking the next morning with a pounding headache and the harsh warnings of Ingrid, the woman that helped her hone her powers, howling at the forefront of her memory: _only use your magic when necessary, and never for fun_. She’s almost never lost her head, and even fewer times than that has she lost her memory. Sure, there was that one time in college with the jungle juice, and Ruby’s 25th birthday when all they did was shots, but both of those times, she was already in her apartment. 

But today was her thirtieth birthday, and her goal was to get _drunk_ — especially after everything else that led her here. They are out not only to celebrate her birthday, but also her move to England after her decision to accept the position offered to her by the Princess Margaret Hospital, which just happens to be in the same town Belle’s university is in. The move that she decided to take because she wanted something new — and because Neal decided after four years that he wanted something new, as well. 

Only for him, it was breaking up with her and dating one of the women from his office, telling her that she “wasn’t good enough” for him anymore, even though she was at least a hundred times better than he was in the first place. 

Ruby’s pretty sure he was cheating on her anyway, but she was always too blind to see it. 

So she accepted the position from the hospital headhunters and packed up everything she owned, using Belle to do apartment walkthroughs, though she decided just to take the apartment next to the one Belle shares with her colleague. Two weeks later, she was on a plane all by herself, wishing she didn’t have to wait a month for Ruby and Mary Margaret to help her — but that month has passed, her apartment now filled with her things and fully furnished, and now they’re all out to celebrate before Ruby and Mary Margaret fly back home.

But it’s her birthday, god damn it, and she is going to celebrate. She’s already been here for a few weeks, but she’s already loving Windsor, loving England, how different it is from Boston, from _New_ England, but still a little reminiscent of home. She’ll be just fine here on her own. 

Neal would have hated it here anyway, if he would have decided that he cared enough to come with her. If he actually loved her. Emma doesn’t need him, doesn’t need _anyone,_ just needs to take some time and take care of herself. 

Neal can go fuck himself. Or fuck that woman from his office that he was already fucking. 

Alright, she might already be pretty drunk. But she wants _more_. She wants to forget, forget him enough to celebrate even more, and she’s maybe almost there. 

But it’s two in the morning, last call at the only bar Belle had ever been to in this part of town, and she’s run out of time. 

So Ruby buys them another round of shots, of whatever the strongest alcohol that would affect Emma the most — and, even wincing as much externally as she is on the inside, she knows the answer is tequila. One more, a double after Ruby insists, a small orange juice chaser, and they’re out, the smiling, greying bartender locking the door behind them. 

The weather in Berkshire is far from perfect, though perhaps better than it could have been at the end of October. Instead of the regular downpour that Belle told them to expect, it’s simply drizzling, the air around them wet instead of drenching. So, of course, they decide to go for a walk. 

Which just gives Ruby another reason to gripe. 

“You can’t even, just, make us a protective bubble? Or a big umbrella?” 

Emma rolls her eyes. 

“You already know that I can’t,” she says, though she feels the way her magic hums through her, just itching to be used. 

Ruby groans, loud enough to be heard by the whole group. “What good is it to be best friends with a witch, if she can’t even use her magic to keep us dry?” 

Emma rolls her eyes. Again. 

“I’m not going through this with you again,” she snaps. “I can’t just _use_ my magic. It doesn’t work like that.” Of course, she always wished she could, but this is a thought that she chooses to keep to herself. 

What’s the purpose of having magic if she’s not allowed to use it? 

Thankfully, Belle changes the subject. “Did you know that Berkshire is where — where the original Captain Hook was from?” Belle asks, her words coming slowly and slurred. 

“Really?” Mary Margaret seems genuinely interested, the only one of them that has stayed fully away from alcohol on their trip, mainly because of the ever-growing baby bump, though she never was one to get anywhere beyond tipsy since that first margarita experience during her sophomore year of college, where Emma had to talk her out of streaking across campus. 

“Yeah, there’s a statue of him and everything.” 

“Let’s go see it!” Ruby suggests, arm wrapped around Emma’s shoulders, though she seems to miss the fact that Emma seems to currently be having trouble standing on her own as it is. 

The walk is only a few blocks, all of them thankfully sporting waterproof coats that Belle insisted they all bring with, even though Ruby had to sit on her suitcase to close it _before_ the jacket was added. How that woman seemed to wear so little clothing but still have trouble fitting everything into a suitcase was beyond all of them. Their walk is quiet, all of them trying their hardest not to let the drizzle get to them any deeper than their coats. 

But then they see it, lit up by a light recessed into the sidewalk before him, and he’s… well, he’s _perfect_. The most incredible-looking man Emma has ever seen, and he’s made out of damned stone. Just her luck. 

Of course, it’s not the first time Emma has seen the statue -- in fact, she’s gone the past month eating her lunch on a nearby bench without even knowing it was supposed to be Captain Hook. 

In hindsight, the hook that he has in place of his left hand probably would have been a good clue. 

She remembers the first time she walked past this statue, meeting Belle for lunch in her office in the library. She had been taken aback by its perfection from that very first moment, the world seeming to slow around her as she stared at him. Something about him seemed to comfort her, bring the chaos of her life to a pause, just long enough for her to catch her breath and focus on something else for a little while at a time.

So she kept coming back. Eating lunch on the bench beside him has been a regular occurrence for her, and she’s spent a few days a week just sitting there, looking up at his anguished face. Sometimes she even talks to him, as long as no one is around to hear — which isn’t very often, given it’s the middle of a college campus in the beginning of the fall. 

He’s become… a friend, of sorts. Someone she can talk to without using her international minutes to call Mary Margaret. A confidant, who she knows won’t go around spewing her secrets. 

Because, you know, he’s a statue. 

Belle is saying something in the background, explaining to them the history of the statue, of the story of _Peter Pan_ and how the town believes that Barrie’s villain is based off of this statue that has been here for as long as anyone can remember. Emma is trying to listen to the story, she really is, but there is just something about the statue standing in front of her that steals her attention, just as it has every other time she’s found herself near it. Every time she tries to focus on his features, it’s as if the rest of the world around them goes silent. 

_It’s just a weird side effect from the tequila,_ she tells herself, but even the voice in her head is muffled as she stares at him.

He’s gorgeous, even for a damned _statue._

“I thought he was an old, skinny guy with a handlebar mustache?” Emma asks, realizing halfway through her sentence that she cut Belle off in the middle of a thought. 

“Why, because of that animated movie?” Belle asks, turning her attention to Emma, but Emma’s eyes are still glued to the statue. 

“Well, yeah.” 

“The version of him in that movie is nothing like the Hook that Barrie described. People have given him a black perm and bushy eyebrows, but Barrie himself described our villain as ‘in a word, the handsomest man I have ever seen, and he was a magnificent pirate and not wholly unheroic.’ He had black hair, yes, but it didn’t have to be a perm, and there is nothing in Barrie’s description to say that he is a tall, thin old man.”

Ruby comes to stand beside Emma, her eyes trained on the statue in the same way. “This is a perfect specimen of a man, and he’s made from a slab of marble.”

“Do we know the artist who made it?” Mary Margaret asks from the back of the group, always interested in artists. 

Belle is silent for a moment, then turns to face the group, her eyebrows forming a low ‘v’ on her forehead. “Actually, I’m not sure about that. From what I know, the statue has been here for longer than the college has.”

“So no one knows where it came from?”

“Well, there’s an old wives’ tale that he used to be a sailor, a pirate, who watched the woman he loved die in his arms and was cursed for not doing anything to save her, cursed to stand here and wait for his True Love to save him.”

“But obviously that’s not true,” Mary Margaret comments, perhaps not sounding quite as convincing as she was hoping to. 

“No,” Emma replies, and Belle shakes her head. “No, of course not.”

A beat of silence passes between the four of them, each of them staring at the statue from a different angle, overcome by the spell he has them under. 

And then, suddenly, Ruby starts laughing. Cackling, almost, unable to stand up straight until she takes a wheezing deep breath, clapping her hand against Emma’s shoulder. 

“It’s your birthday, Swan!” she barely gets out, cackling again. “Go up and give him a kiss!” 

“Ruby!” Mary Margaret scolds from the other side of the statue, leaning to the side to stare at her around the man’s perfectly sculpted legs, so realistic that they can actually see the curves of muscles beneath the marble britches. 

But Belle and Emma are just drunk enough to join in with the laughter, also thinking it’s a good idea. 

“What the hell,” Emma says, shrugging. “I’m thirty years old and my boyfriend just broke up with me. It’s probably safer than a one-night stand.” 

Belle thinks this is _particularly_ funny, and her laughter, echoing around the courtyard around them, drives Ruby into another fit of laughter herself. 

“Come on, guys, help me up!” Emma yells, hooking her arm around the leg of the statue, trying to use it to hoist herself up on the pedestal. Mary Margaret, the only one of them sober enough to give her any actual assistance, walks over to her, understanding that it would do more harm to try to talk her out of this than to just help her. 

One foot up on the pedestal, then the other, grasping her free hand around the curve of his arm, the hand of which is wrapped around the hilt of his sword. She almost loses her footing as she tries to move her grasp from his leg to his other arm, finding a hold on his hook. Finally, she has reached the platform, standing almost face to face with the statue, though it stands a few inches taller than she does. He really is a magnificent piece of art, from the individual strands of hair on his head to the stubble covering his chin to the embroidery work on his vest — amazing detail, she realizes even in her drunken haze, for a statue that has been standing for longer than the college around it, details surviving the wind and the rain that she has already discovered are regular for England. For a moment, Emma is overcome with compassion for the man standing before her, for the sadness visible not only in his eyes, but that’s written across his whole face. 

_Christ_ , she thinks, _I must have had more to drink than I thought._

“Just kiss him, damn it!” Ruby yells, laughing at her some more, and Emma stares back at him for another moment before pulling her face to his, pressing her lips hard against the cold, wet stone. 

For a moment, nothing happens.

Then, suddenly, a flash of lightning strikes on the other side of the building beside them, startling Emma enough to almost lose her footing, so focused on keeping her balance that she does not notice the spark of magic that erupts from her fingertips at the same time another flash of lightning hits just a few feet from where they are, the thunder from both of them rolling almost simultaneously in the charged air around them. 

“Emma, get down from there!” Mary Margaret yells, just as Emma feels the stone beneath her fingers start to change, and when she looks up, the statue has turned into a man. A real-life, living, breathing man with twinkling eyes and a bright smile.

“Hello, love,” he says, his voice dark and deep. 

Taken aback, she moves to take a step back, forgetting for a moment where she is, and the edge of her boot slips off the edge of the pedestal. For the briefest moment, she believes this is how she dies — falling to her death after kissing a statue and hallucinating. But when she feels a warm, hard arm wrap around her waist, she automatically moves her arms around his neck. 

He smiles. 

Everyone is quiet for a moment, still trying to piece together what has happened in front of them. While the rest of the girls share glances, though, Emma finds herself only able to focus on the man in front of her, the _very real_ man who has come to life under her fingertips. Or, to be more specific, she can only focus on his eyes. They are unlike any color she has ever seen, lit up only by the streetlights around them and the few recessed into the pavement, specifically there to light up the statue, a bright blue that reminds her of the brightest, clearest sky, but at the same time somehow also the dark blue of the depths of the ocean. 

“How did—” she starts, somehow more sober than moments before, but the words get lodged in her throat even further when he smiles at her. Swallowing her nerves, she takes a breath and tries again. “What happened? How are you… not a statue?” 

His smile grows, somehow, overtaking his eyes as the brightest feature on his face, since it seems to radiate its own light. 

“I have my suspicions, love, but I do know that I am forever grateful for it.” 

“I'm not your love,” she mumbles, the words coming out much less defiant than they sounded in her head. 

_But what if_ … Belle's comment from earlier suddenly comes rushing back to her: ‘ _cursed to stand here and wait for his True Love to save him.’_

_That's insane._

_This whole situation is insane._

“Emma,” Ruby says from below them, and both Emma and the statue-man turn their heads towards her. “What in the hell just happened?” 

“He's…” Belle tries, then shakes her head. “That's damn impossible, that is.” 

“You must have done it with your magic, Emma,” Mary Margaret says matter-of-factly, the obviousness of it all washing away any memory of what Belle may have said earlier. 

“Is it really…” Belle starts again, snapping her eyes to the man still standing against Emma, holding her against his hard, sculpted chest, the ridges of his muscles almost as prominent as when they were made of stone. 

Not that she really notices that. Of course not. 

“Are you really Captain Hook?” Belle asks, and Emma thinks it's a joke at first, until she looks down at the seriousness painted across her friend's face. 

“Captain Killian Jones, at your service,” he says, nodding down towards Belle, then quickly flitting his eyes from her to Mary Margaret, to Ruby, and back to Emma, a sparkle in his gaze that was not there before. “In every way imaginable,” he mutters, pressing his lips closer to her ear so only she can hear it before leaning back again and quickly winking at her. “Though, yes, you seem to have heard of me by my more colorful moniker, Hook.” Finally, he unwraps his hands from her waist and moves to step off the pedestal, which he accomplishes with the help of Mary Margaret before reaching his own hand up to assist Emma. When she reaches the ground beside him, he leans in towards her again, his breath warm against her cheek, and he whispers, “I was hoping it would be you,” before turning his attention back to the half-circle of women now gathered around him. 

“What are we going to do with him?” Mary Margaret asks. 

Ruby is the first to respond, failing to even attempt to hide the way her eyes take in his whole body. “I have a few ideas.” 

For some reason, Ruby’s comment makes Emma's stomach sink, but she ignores the feeling, just as she chooses to ignore the quickening rain falling all around them. “We can't just leave him here.”

“I appreciate that, love, truly,” the man says. _Killian_. The statue that has come to life has a _name._

“The couch in my apartment is still unclaimed,” Emma suggests quickly, before Ruby can add another of her comments. “As long as it's okay with the rest of you, he can stay there for the night. And we can figure out what to do in the morning when we're all in a better shape.” 

They all silently agree, and when Emma turns to face Killian, to see if he has anything to say about their plan, he simply smiles at her, his hook resting in the guard of his sword and his other hand propped on his hip.

“Can I at least have the name of my savior and her lovely acquaintances?” he asks, reaching his arm out in hopes of shaking their hands, starting with Mary Margaret. While Mary Margaret and Belle remain casual, Ruby sways into his body, pressing her free hand against his chest. 

Though she cannot figure out why, this causes heat to rise to Emma's cheeks, but it is nothing compared to the rush of warmth that Emma feels over her body when, instead of simply shaking her hand, Killian raises it to his lips, pressing a soft kiss against her knuckles. His lips are soft, warm, welcoming — though she has no reason to notice that. 

_What the actual fuck?_

“I thank you, again, Swan,” he says, choosing her last name for some reason, his eyes still shining bright, and she has to turn her gaze down to the sidewalk to stop herself from getting lost in them. 

“We should head back,” Belle says, and Emma has never been more thankful for the quickening rain before in her life. “The rain will probably just get worse.” 

“Can you tell us what happened to you, Killian?” Mary Margaret asks as they all begin to follow Belle back down the road and to Emma’s apartment.

“I would really rather not go into detail as of yet,” he says softly, his eyes turned down to the ground. “But the much-shortened version of it is that I fell in love with another man’s wife and she chose to run away with me, though her husband came after us and—” Emma hears his voice falter, can see the bobbing of his Adam’s apple as he struggles for a moment, the rise and fall of his shoulders as he takes a deep breath. “He killed her,” he says finally, though he has not completely pulled himself back together. “And then convinced a witch to cast a curse to turn me into a statue until my True Love came and broke it.”

“And, uh, how long ago was this?” Emma asks, filling the silence that settled at the end of his story. 

“What year is it now?” 

Emma's eyes grow wide, and when she doesn't respond right away, Ruby fills in with the answer: “2019.” 

She hears him take a sharp breath, rubbing his hand over his mouth and his scruff before pushing his fingers through his hair. “Bloody hell,” he mumbles, though Emma is fairly sure she is the only one that heard him. “It was just upwards of four hundred years ago.”

Silence settles around them again as they all think about this statement. Emma has so much more she wants to ask him, questions about his love and this witch and _how the hell_ she broke the spell the witch cast on him. 

But half-drunk and surrounded by her friends, all three of whom will overthink her growing interest in him, is not the right time to bring up these questions. So, instead of voicing the concerns that cloud her already-clouded mind, she reaches out and finds his hand with her own, turning to him just in time to see the soft smile that spreads across his features, so different in contrast with the rest of the persona he has shown them over the past few minutes. 

By the time they make it back across the small town and to their apartment, the drizzle that was in the air when they left the bar has turned into a torrential downpour, which isn't as much of a problem for the girls as it is for Killian, who has been wearing the same outfit for four hundred years — that very outfit which now is dripping puddles in the entryway as the girls dig through their suitcases for clothing for him to wear until they can go out the next morning and get him something more modern. 

“I have a pair of sweatpants?” Emma offers, running from her room with them and another towel to where he is waiting. “Though I do have to apologize, you'll have to… uh…” She is useless against the blush that rises to her cheeks, even more so when she raises her eyes to find a knowing smirk on his face. “I have nothing for you to, uh, wear under them.” 

He leans in towards her, adding a smile to his smirk as his lips almost graze her ear. “No different than usual, love,” he murmurs, pulling away to watch Emma's eyes widen in realization before he says, “Now, where should I go to change, unless you would like to offer your assistance?” 

“Take off your boots,” she responds, trying not to let the effect he has on her show on her face. “The bathroom is on the other side of the fridge.” 

His smirk disappears in a second. “The what now?”

“Oh, shit. Right, four hundred years,” she says, then points to the appliance in question, waiting for him to step out of his boots to follow her. “That large silver thing is the fridge. It's where we keep cold food.” 

“Ah.” 

“I guess the world has changed a lot over the last four hundred years, huh?” she asks, trying to fill the silence again. 

“Aye, love, it seems it did,” he says softly, swaying into her space again. “Though I will say, I am thankful for the assistance you and your acquaintances have to offer. And incredibly indebted to you for breaking my curse. Even if you're a tad wary of believing what that means about you and I.” 

Crossing her arms over her chest, she takes a step back from him, needing to put more space between them. “I'm not wary of anything, Jones.” 

“I beg to differ, love. You're a bit of an open book.” 

_I'm not your love,_ she moves to snap back at him, the words on the tip of her tongue, but they don't come once she turns her gaze up to his, once she sees the sincerity in his sky blue gaze. Her next breath doesn’t come, either, lodged with the words halfway down her throat and unable to budge.

“I found a shirt that might fit him!” Mary Margaret yells, running into the hallway before Emma can step away from him again, her friend's eyes widen for a moment before she takes hold of herself. 

“Good,” Emma says quickly, shoving the sweatpants into his arms as she backs away from him, her hands finding the hallway wall behind her. Her breath is still stuck in her lungs, though, and she’s not sure if she’ll ever be able to dislodge it if he keeps looking at her like that. Turning to Mary Margaret, she points to the bathroom as he reaches out to take the shirt from Mary Margaret. “Now he can go get changed, and we can all go to bed.” 

Not even waiting for a response, she turns and rushes down the hallway into her bedroom, practically slamming the door behind her. 

▫️▪️▫️▪️⭐▪️▫️▪️▫️

It takes her much longer to fall asleep than it should after all the alcohol she consumed. Usually, her body is ready to pass out, barely having the energy to scroll through social media before sleep overtakes her; but tonight, she does not even worry about trying to use her phone. Instead, she lays still, her eyes set on the ceiling but her mind set on anything but, small sparks of magic tingling between her fingers. 

What the fuck even happened today? ‘ _True Love’s kiss_ ’ is absolutely insane, and there’s no way that was what happened with Killian. It must have been her magic, gone awry with her drunken stupor, mixed with the weird weather and that story Belle put in her head. 

Except… 

Except his story wasn’t that far off from the one Belle told them. Cursed by a witch. That’s _impossible_. Or, there was a point in her life where she would have believed it was impossible. But then she turned twenty and learned that she was a magic-wielder. And if she was a magic-wielder — a _witch_ , by all senses of the word — then why was it so hard for her to believe Killian’s story? 

She already knows the answer to that. It’s because of what it would mean if it’s true. What it would mean about her. About _them_. 

Maybe if she hadn’t just gotten out of a relationship, especially the relationship she believed was never going to end, it would be a little easier to comprehend. Maybe. She seriously doubts it, she can’t even kid herself with that. But maybe if she hadn’t been so blind and put everything she had into her relationship with Neal, she would not have been as destroyed. And maybe — _maybe_ — if her heart hadn’t been that destroyed just a few days before she moved across a damned ocean, she may have been more open to letting someone else in. Instead, she had decided to bar her heart from more hurt, had decided not to let anyone else in. 

And then Killian came back to life. 

It would be a completely different story if she didn’t feel so drawn to him, if she didn’t actually enjoy his company so much after so short a time. (And, who is she kidding, if he wasn’t so gorgeous.) 

There’s far too much to unpack there, so she tries to close her eyes — only to see his shining blue ones staring right back at her, sparkling with mischief when he is not being terribly forward. 

_What is happening to her?_

She tries to quiet her mind, and when sleep finally does overtake her, all of her dreams are filled with tight leather pants and shining ocean blue eyes. 

▫️▪️▫️▪️⭐▪️▫️▪️▫️

“This is the most terrible swill I have ever tasted,” he comments, setting the mug of coffee back on the saucer in front of him, his face contorted into an expression of pure disgust. He’s tasted a lot of things in his time, especially over all the years he’s spent on ships — hard bread, half-purified saltwater, more kinds of fish than a man should have to endure, but _this_ — it’s all nothing compared to whatever the infernal black liquid in the mug before him is. 

“Alright then,” Mary Margaret says, and Emma rolls her eyes as she pulls the mug back in front of her. “Mark it down, Killian does not like coffee.” 

“For a man who hasn’t eaten for four hundred years, you sure are pretty picky, Jones,” Emma comments, and when she turns to jeer at him, he narrows his eyes, and points the end of his now-hookless brace in her direction. 

He’s still not quite sure why he had to leave his hook behind this morning. Belle tried to tell him that he wouldn’t need it, though he barely agreed with her; it had always proven useful to him in the past, and there was no way for him to know if he was going to need it in this new world. Emma had just told him that it would draw attention to him, which was probably slightly more valid, though it took him years to get past the insecurity of having a hook in the first place. 

And then Mary Margaret, apparently their voice of reason, pointed out just how much easier it would be to try on new clothing without the hook, and he saw the sense behind this and agreed. 

“A man knows what he likes.” 

“Or, more appropriately, what he doesn’t,” she jokes. 

He is already enthralled with her. She’s utterly brilliant in every way that entices him the most: her smarts, the way she is not afraid to speak her mind, how she does not hold back from putting him in his place, not to mention the way he is drawn towards her. Beyond the fact that she has broken his curse, he is thankful for her, to say the very least, though she does not yet seem ready to feel the same about him. 

The waitress drops a plate in front of him and a glass of orange liquid in front of Ruby. He does not miss the way the woman’s eyes scan him, or the half-smile that she offers before turning away — but he also does not miss the flash of anger that crosses Emma’s face at the woman’s attention. He has never had trouble winning affections of women, but the last thing he wants to do is lose what little affection the blonde goddess before him has for him. So, after she takes another sip from the mug, apparently liking the brown liquid — _coffee_ — much more than he does, he smiles warmly at her, picking up the pastry on the plate before him, trying to work the cogs of thought rolling through his head into that one expression before he takes a bite. 

“Oh!” he exclaims, his momentarily-closed eyes missing the way Emma’s eyes go wide at the sound. “This, however, is a confectionery delight.” He takes another bite, closing his eyes again as he quickly chews the mouthful he has just taken. “What do you call this again?” 

“A muffin.” 

“ _Muffin_ ,” he repeats, liking the way it feels on his tongue, though before he has a chance to say anything else, a loud rumble from his stomach takes the place of any words he may say. “I did order more food than this, aye?” 

Emma smiles at him. “I ordered you waffles. If you think your muffin is good, wait until you get to those.” 

“Thank you, love,” he says, then turns his attention back towards his muffin, though it takes everything in him not to focus on the bright smile that is still spread across Emma’s face. 

▫️▪️▫️▪️

“What is the next thing on our to-do list, Emma?” Mary Margaret asks, signing the bill from their breakfast as everyone gathers their things to leave. 

“Well, Killian needs some clothing that isn’t leather and sopping wet, or scraps from some suitcases.”

While Emma assumed this wasn’t going to be the easiest feat for a man who had never even heard of denim (and who admitted to her the night before he never wore any sort of undergarment), she didn’t expect it to be _fun_. 

It started when she was standing beside him surrounded by packages of boxers and briefs (after, of course, winning the argument against Ruby of who should help him make this decision), trying to keep her cool and not let the heat she feels rushing through her body show on her cheeks. 

“Why do we need to start with these again, love?” he asks, reading over the words on the back of the boxer-brief package as she does the same with the boxers, if only to avoid his eyes. 

She sighs, wondering how in the world she found herself in this situation. “Because you're going to need to wear these when you try on pants, so we need to buy them first so you can take them out of the package.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she watches him nod as he turns his attention towards the package in her hands. 

“And, uh, what —” he tries, then takes a moment to cough before starting again, trying to hide his own embarrassment. “What seems to be the difference between these again?” 

Wetting her bottom lip, Emma shakes her head and closes her eyes, still not entirely sure this isn’t just a big, embarrassing dream. “The ones you’re holding are tighter, so they… hold you in place better.”

“Aha.” A beat passes, and he gestures the end of the brace towards her. “So those…?”

“They’re looser, yes.”

“What if, uh…” he starts, darting his eyes towards Emma, but the moment she meets them, he turns his gaze back down to the package in his hand. “What if I choose one of these and decide I do not like them?” 

Emma reaches over and pulls the package from his hand, holding them both at her side as she turns to look at him. “We’ll just buy both and I’ll keep the ones you don’t want, okay?” 

At this, his eyes go wide, his cheeks even redder than they were before, and he fails to hide the way his eyes snap down to her hips before returning to the package in his hand, seemingly needing to avert his gaze. “You wear these, as well?” 

“As pajamas, Killian. I wear them as _pajamas_ ,” she replies, rolling her eyes, but she can’t help but smile at him. “Let’s go buy these so we can move on to pants.” 

As they turn away from the aisle and head towards the cash registers, Killian bumps his arm into hers, and when she turns to him, he wags his eyebrows across his forehead. “Are you going to help me with those, too, love?” he asks, his voice deep, embarrassment completely melted away as if they hadn’t been discussing the benefits of boxers versus boxer-briefs just moments ago. 

“Uh, no,” she replies cooly, watching his face fall. “You can handle pants on your own, though I will help you with the fun part, if you need it.” His face lights up in an instant, an almost-inappropriate response on his lips, but when she adds, “The shirts,” it almost disappears again.

“Putting clothing back on is hardly the _fun_ part, wouldn’t you say, love?”

“Jesus, Killian,” Emma breathes, rolling her eyes. “We’re here to buy you clothing.” 

He shrugs, swaying away from her again, and she immediately misses the warmth where his skin pressed against her own, though she tries her hardest to ignore it, even as a chill passes through her body. “Your loss.”

But watching him come out of the dressing room in the first pair of jeans he deems to fit him reasonably enough is definitely _not_ her loss. 

Though the fact that Ruby is sitting beside her when he comes out wearing the first pair takes some of the excitement away. 

“What do you think, Swan?” he asks, coming back around the corner, and before he sees them sitting there, he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and gets distracted. “I could get used to this denim,” he comments, his eyes going wide as he admires his reflection from multiple angles. 

Ruby lets out a low whistle, and Killian’s eyes snap towards her, his face reddening a few shades when he realizes she’s there. “So could I,” she comments, and Emma elbows her hard. 

“They look great,” she comments, trying her hardest to not make it obvious that she is most _definitely_ amazed with how the dark denim moulds to the curves of his ass. Emma is fairly sure that she’s never stared at a man’s ass with the severity she’s trying to avoid staring at his. “Do they fit you? Are they comfortable?” 

“Well, not as comfortable as my leathers, I will say, but I see why they’ve become more popular.” 

“Did you try the other sizes?”

“The first was definitely too small, since I struggled to even squeeze my thighs into them. But I’m so used to the tightness of my old breeches that I think any looser would make me uncomfortable.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Ruby mumbles, and though Emma tries to ignore her, she fears the anger she feels still shows on her face. Still, though, she tries to push it down. 

“Ready for the next part of the adventure?” she asks, needing to change the subject.

Killian’s face lights up, smiling at her as he slips his hand into his back pocket. “The fun part, aye,” he says, winking at her, and she avoids Ruby’s glare as she follows him back into the dressing room. 

▫️▪️▫️▪️

“Holy shit,” she breathes, the words slipping past her tongue without her permission, and once Killian has tossed the long-sleeved shirt Mary Margaret loaned him on the bench of the dressing room, he turns to her. His eyes have darkened to a stormy blue-grey, his brows low on his face. 

“What?” he asks, a hard bite to the word that Emma feels in her stomach.

“Your tattoos,” she says quickly, trying to alleviate the tension between them, at the same time Killian angrily asks, “My scars?”

“What?”

“What?”

“Your tattoos,” she says again, reaching out to gently run her finger along the one furthest down his forearm, a heart with a dagger through it, all behind a ribbon that reads “Milah” in elegant letters, though she finds herself unable to contain the sparks that shoot from her fingertips at the contact and pulls her hand away quickly, clutching it to her chest. 

When she turns her eyes up to his, they are slowly turning back to a less angry shade of blue. “You have… you have so many,” she whispers, moving just a touch closer to him so she can take a better look at the art that covers his body, for some reason feeling the need to touch them all, though the way her magic responded to his touch simultaneously makes her want to recoil and lean into him all at once.

“Aye, love,” he answers, and she takes the chance to reach her fingers out once more, only a few sparks this time as she begins tracing the circle of the compass on his right bicep that has Greek letters at the compass points and is surrounded with lettering in a different language beside flowers that turn into intricate, swirling linework leading to a skull and crossbones on the front of his right shoulder. “That’s what years spent on the seas will do to a man.” 

“What do they all mean?” she asks, her eyes falling to the very top edge of an anchor in a sea of swirling blue that peeks out over the top of his newly-acquired jeans. 

“They don’t all have to mean things, you know?” 

Her fingers ghost across his chest, both emitting and filling her with a warmth she has never felt before even though she is barely touching the dark chest hair that covers him as her fingers move towards his left shoulder, where the corner of the intricate piece that covers his back comes around with a kraken’s tentacle, tangled with the leather straps that hold his brace on his arm. 

“But some of them do?” 

“Aye,” he breathes, her fingers reaching over his shoulder. Here, he reaches up to hold her wrist, stopping her fingers from moving any further. Pulling her hand away from him, he moves it back to his right shoulder, to the compass. “This one is my first, for my brother. His initials are the north, and the most important lesson he taught me before he was taken is what it says around it.” 

“What language is it in?” 

“You can’t read Gaeilge?” he asks, a touch of humor to his voice, as if he’s joking; but when he looks down at her, at the confused expression on her face, she knows he’s serious. “It’s in Irish, since that’s where my brother and I were born. It says ‘a man unwilling to fight for what he wants, deserves what he gets.’ And the flowers are for my mother, Alyce, since lilies and daisies were her favorite.” 

“How old were you when she passed?” she asks, her voice barely a whisper as she traces the outline of the compass with her index finger. 

“Six. And Liam was ten. We only stayed in Ireland long enough to bury her before father found us passage to England on a ship.”

“Where you joined the Navy?” 

“Obviously not right away, but yes. England was…” his eyes fall to the ground, rubbing his hand against the side of his face. “Let’s just say Liam and I did not have the nicest childhoods, but we — we don’t have to get into that today.” When he looks back up at her, he tries to pull the corners of his lips up into a smile. “The skull and crossbones explains itself, though,” he continues, as if he weren’t talking about the death of his mother and his rough childhood. “Handsome British Naval Lieutenant turned pirate captain. The _Jolly Roger_ became my life. The ship became the only home I ever had.” 

A beat of silence passes between them, Emma’s eyes still set on the intricate flowers around his compass, her fingers lightly tracing the lines and trying to ignore the soft warmth that continues to slowly fill her body, the soft hum of her magic more intense than it has ever been before. 

“Can I see the one on your back?” she says, her voice barely above a whisper, but when she raises her eyes to try to gauge his response, she realizes that he has been watching her intently. It is not until she meets his eyes, almost losing herself in the oceans she finds there, that he slowly nods. 

“Just, don’t… don’t touch it, please,” he mumbles, as if he is ashamed of it — and when he turns around, Emma sees why. 

The artwork is incredible, of course: a ship, bright yellow and brown, caught in the middle of a dark storm, with the tentacles of a kraken coming up out of the sea, some wrapped around the ship and others wrapping around his body. 

But that’s not what Emma’s focus is on. 

If Killian had said nothing, she probably would not have noticed them, but with his whispered words on her mind as she looks at the colors covering the muscles there, she can also see the mangled lines of scars running in every direction, casting small shadows over his back from the harsh fluorescent lights off the dressing room. 

She has nothing to say. There is nothing she can say that would do anything except thicken the tension that lies between them. She watches the rise and fall off his shoulders as he takes a deep breath, then meets his eyes in the mirror. His face is set, hardened, the muscles of his jaw ticking as he grinds them together. 

“Let's try on one of these t-shirts, yeah?” she asks, smiling softly at him. Of course she wants to know what happened to him, was interested in the story behind his scars, but he is obviously ashamed of them. She has scars of her own, both physical and mental, so she understands the fear that he's trying his best to hide. If he ever decides that he does want to tell her, then she will be thankful for that day. Maybe someday, she'll do the same thing for him, let him in enough to learn of her past, her parents that left her on the side of the road, the foster families that never liked her enough to keep her. Getting the hell out of Maine as soon as she was able. 

Maybe someday. 

For now, she just reaches behind her and picks up one of the folded t-shirts that he picked out, a soft blue color that reminded her of his eyes as soon as she ran her hand against the soft fabric. 

“Thanks,” he mumbles, taking the shirt from her hand but avoiding her eyes. “This is the part you said you'd help me with, aye?" The sadness in his eyes is completely gone, every trace of the past conversation replaced with a single wink.

Emma can't help but let out the soft chuckle that rises through her chest as she reaches out to bunch up the material so she can help guide it over his head. He gets his right arm through on his own, but seems to be struggling with the left, not sure exactly how to guide the brace through the hole, so Emma reaches out to help. 

But when she wraps her fingers around the edge of the leather strap between his skin and the cool metal, he tears it out of her grasp, his eyes wide and angry when she snaps her eyes to meet his. 

“I can only help you if you let me, Killian,” she says softly, and the longest moment she has ever felt passes before the angry lines on his face smooth away, and he nods. She reaches out again, purposefully trying to avoid contact with the brace. 

“Sorry, love,” he mumbles as they work together to get the tip of his brace through the arm hole, but smiles at her as she helps him smooth down the front of the material. “What do you think?” 

She takes a step back to let him look in the mirror, joining him to look at his reflection. “I mean, it fits. And I like the color. But what I think doesn't really matter as much as what you think.” 

He smooths the material over his stomach before reaching down to pick up the next t-shirt on the bench. “Is this one smaller?” 

“Yeah, we started with the bigger one.” 

“Can we try the smaller?” 

Emma nods, reaching out to help him take off the large, not even meaning to brush her fingers along his ribcage, but suddenly becoming very aware of the hitch of his breath when her fingers run along the rigid muscles of his chest. And then she makes the mistake of looking up at his face, meeting his eyes in time to watch them darken for just a flash, turning from the bright midday sky to the deep depths of the dark ocean.

“Sorry,” she whispers, her voice much weaker than she anticipated, and she finds herself wondering if his lips are as warm as his skin, as soft and gentle and welcoming as she originally thought they might be.

So she takes a step back, pulling away from him and letting his shirt fall back into place. 

“No, love,” he says gently, reaching down to pull the fabric up as far as he's able, only needing her help to slide the brace out. “It is I who should be sorry. It's not your fault I've been without a woman's touch for four hundred years.” She helps him pull the fabric up over his head, taking it from him to refold it but continuing to avoid his eyes. 

Until he reaches out and places his index finger under her chin, pulling her gaze back up to meet his. “I'm truly thankful for all your assistance. I missed four hundred years, I would be lost here without you.”

The faintest beginning of a smile passes across her face, but that seems to be enough for him, and he holds the next t-shirt out between them. He helps as much as he's able with this one, though it proves itself to be much more difficult than removing it on his own. The medium is much tighter across his chest, clinging closer to the ridges of his muscles and the sleeves cropped short enough to reveal all but the very top of the compass on his bicep. 

This time when he looks at himself in the mirror, he smiles. “I like this much better, do you agree?” 

She rolls his eyes at him again, but when a smile begins to grow across her features this time, she lets it. She's faced again with the absurdity of it all, the fact that he's real, that he's here beside her — that he's so absolutely full of himself — but also because _damn_ does she agree. She keeps her mouth shut as he tries on some other colors, keeps her jealousy to herself when every single color he puts on compliments him somehow — the black bringing out the brightness of his eyes, the red his light complexion, the white v-neck a stark contrast to the dark chest hair that peeks out from below the collar while barely doing anything to hide the muscles it is hiding. 

But when he slides a charcoal grey button-down shirt over the crisp white t-shirt, leaving the top three buttons undone as he turns to face the mirror, Emma loses her ability to keep her mouth shut any longer. 

“Is there anything you don't look good in?” She tries to pull the words back, clamping her hand over her mouth, but it is too late — and when he turns to her, eyes wide with surprise as he runs his tongue over his smiling bottom lip, there is nothing she can do to hide the embarrassment that rises up her cheeks. 

“No, darling,” he replies, which just makes her redden more. “I would like to believe not.” 

They leave the store with three pairs of pants, a handful of t-shirts, a few long-sleeved Henleys (that are, in her opinion, the most unfair-looking on him, though she manages to keep it to herself this time), two button-downs, and a pair of black leather boots. 

As she swipes her debit card through the machine, Mary Margaret leans closer to her, mumbling in her ear, “I thought that money was for emergencies?” 

Sliding the card back into her wallet, she turns to Mary Margaret. “Are you saying that randomly bringing some man to life and being responsible for him isn't what you would classify as an emergency?” 

Mary Margaret has no response to this. 

▫️▪️▫️▪️

Belle signs them into a study room in the library of Eton College before leading them to the section in one of the back corners where their special “Captain Hook” collection resides — because researching Killian is the next thing they need to do. There are books on J. M. Barrie, the author of _Peter Pan_ ; carefully-bound original versions of Barrie’s play and of the original novel form. There are books on what has been learned about Hook, collections of papers written on him, on the fables about the statue, about what can be proven about these fables — which begins, and ends, at the existence of a British Naval Captain, Killian Jones, born in the 1580’s and whose love was killed in front of him and his left hand chopped off on the deck of his ship a few years prior to his disappearance in 1618, according to his discovered Captain’s Logs. 

But that’s it. They spend the next few hours mulling over a few shelves’ worth of materials to discover anything they can about Killian, and all they get is a speculation about his birth and death. 

Though, after Belle reads the last of these findings out loud, Emma rests her forehead against the table in front of her, Mary Margaret and Ruby turn to her, waiting for a response. 

Emma pushes herself to her feet, her breath heavy in her chest. “I’m sorry,” she tries, coming out barely a breath. “I need — I need some air.” 

Before anyone can respond, she is out of their study room and around the corner. 

Thankfully, no one follows her for a few minutes. She finds a bench, her eyes closed as she focuses on the slowly-slowing beat of her heart, on the measured draw of her breath. This is all so much, _too_ much, far too much to handle on top of everything else happening to her recently, and she pushes herself away from the bench, beginning to pace back and forth in front of the shelf, her head flooding with too many thoughts. The break up, the move — all the way across a _fucking_ ocean — and now stories of True Love, corroborated by academic papers and things from this… shelf. 

She turns on her heel, turns back towards the shelf, slowly running her finger along the spines, one shelf and then the next, top to bottom, until she is sitting on the floor beside the shelf. 

Except the bottom shelf is empty, so she can see behind it, where the shelf meets the wall — and there, she sees it: a small, leather-bound book behind the shelf, stuck between the metal and the wall. She reaches back, curling her fingers around the leather binding, and when she finally frees it, she feels the air leave her lungs, suddenly lightheaded and simultaneously weighed down in ways that she has never felt before. 

_Jones_

Etched into the cover, surrounded by the same intricate, swirling linework around Killian’s Jolly Roger tattoo, is his last name. She opens to the first page, covered in perfect calligraphic penmanship, and reading her slow translation of the old-fashioned spelling certainly doesn’t make it any easier to breathe. 

_22 June 1604_

_Todaye, as the first day of my posytion as captain of His Majestie’s_ Jewel of the Realm _, I, Liam Jones, do begyn here the Captain’s Logs for saide vessyl, where I will hence-forth keep reckord of alle pertinent informatyon. Here, I shal keep track of the dailie happenyngs withe and around the ship, begyning todaye with my taking over as Captain._

There are more pages of the same, of Captain Jones recording the journeys and missions of the _Jewel of the Realm._ Until, one day, it changes to a less-perfect script, fewer loops and curls and more ink splattered across the pages. 

_04 March 1607_

_Todaye, our greate captain was takyn from us, kylled on a mission comissyoned by our kinge. As per his last entrie, the kinge sent us to fynd a flower on a smal northern islande under the gyse as a medicinal herbe that would help overcome a great syckness that has spread through the lande. In hopes of provieng me wrong,_ _Liam_ _Captain Jones cut his own arme wyth this plante and was quicklie kiled by this herbe, which turns out to be not medicyn, but poisyn. In his deathe, I, Lieutenant Killian Jones, have taken up his posytione as captain of this vessle._

 _Because of the coruptyn of the kinge, the kynd of man that would send his naval officyr to collect this poisyn for him, I have decyded to sail this ship not in the name of the kinge, but insted now in the name of pyracy. This shyp is no longer the_ Jewel of the Realm _, but wyll hence-forthe sayl under the name of the_ Jolly Roger _, flying pirate colors._

She continues to flip through the pages, reading clips here and there as Killian describes the workings of a pirate ship. 

Slowly paging through it, Emma can’t believe what she is seeing before her very eyes. “This is… impossible,” she whispers, running her index finger down one of the pages that catches her eye.

_12 April 1610_

_Milah’s husband founde his waie to the JR todae. The whole crewe tryed to fight him offe, but were useles agynst whatever forms of Blacke magyk he has at his dysposal, and as I was dueling with him, I tooke a particularle bad blow to my left hande, cleaved clean offe, whych the Crocidyle tooke with him when he disapeard. We could not act in tyme to save Milah from his Evil, either, and there was nothyng I could do as he crushed her hearte before mye very eyes and she crumpld to the deck, pledging her love to me wyth her last breathe as the vyle man dysapearred into a cloud of ashe and smoke. I vowed to her that I would avenge the wrong that her wycked husband did againste her, and even as her bodie now lay on the bottom of the Sea, it is a vow that I feare wyll follow me to the grayve._

“Impossible,” she breathes again, knowing that the words corroborate the story he recalled to her with more detail than she could have imagined. So she turns to the end, and though the last few pages are blank, there are a few covered in a script other than Killian’s, she assumes after he is cursed and his First Mate takes over. 

_18 Jan. 1618._

_Captain Jones was todaie deceivd by a member of hys own crewe, believed now to be working undere the orders of Rumpelstiltskin, the Dark Magicyan marryd to the Captain’s love Milah. Folowyng the directione of this man, he and Jones, along with meself and Lt Humphrey, ventured into the foreyst northe of the English towne Berkshyre to fynd a wytch said to have a spelle to lead him to his enemie and help defeat hym once and for alle. Instead, folowing the wytch’s instruction, we watchd helples-ly as his bodie instead transformyd into stone before our eyes. Instead of transcrybing, I have included it in the backe of this booke in hopes that one daye we may fynd a way to sayv our goode Captain from the wytch’s kurse._

Quickly finishing the end of the page, which turns out to be the last written page in the book, Emma turns through the remaining pages until she finds what the First Mate said he left in the book, though it seems to be by some sort of miracle that it is still attached. 

Stuck between two of the last few pages, Emma finds a small piece of paper, no more than two inches wide, which was probably rolled up at one point, though it has since then folded flat; when she unrolls it, she finds it to be around a foot long. The writing on it is more calligraphic than the script from the Captain’s Log, parts of it more difficult to read with age and part of the bottom corner torn off, but at she reads it, she feels the breath leave her lungs. 

_Captain Killian Jones, cursed synce the d———s brother’s lyfe-less body into the Sea, now fynds himselfe cursed for alle eternity to watche the World move around hym, use-less agaynst the kurse of time that will ——— of the villainous blakness that filles hys heart after —————— untile the daie his One True Love saves hym with True Love’s Kyss._

Using the shelf behind her to help her back to her feet, she rushes back around the corner to the study room, the leather-bound book clutched between her hands. She wants to just reveal what she has found, but she has another plan, one that would allow her to corroborate this story of Killian’s.

“Killian!” she yells, pulling open the door, and every eye in the room is wide as they turn towards her. 

“Yes, love?” 

“When — when was Milah killed? What day?” 

“Emma, you can’t really expect— “ Mary Margaret says, but Killian holds up his hand, silencing her as he speaks. 

“The twelfth of April, sixteen hundred and ten.” His answer comes immediately, not even needing a moment to pull the answer from the back of his mind. 

“And what about — what about the day Liam died?” 

“The fourth of March, four years prior. Swan, what is this about?” 

In response, Emma tosses the book down on the table, where it slides across the surface and lands in front of him. 

Killian’s eyes go wide, a smile spreading across his face as he runs his thumb over the embossed leather cover — but everyone else in the room is utterly confused. 

“What is this?” Ruby asks as Killian flips open the cover and begins to read over the pages in front of them. 

“This is the Captain’s Log from my ship, though how this library managed to get their hands on it is a bloody miracle. It has — it has everything in it. It starts during Liam’s time as a Captain, the mission the king sent us on that got him killed. The turn to piracy. Milah. It’s all there.”

Mary Margaret and Belle turn towards Emma at his words, Ruby’s eyes set on the script from across the table. 

Emma nods. “I read through it, and it’s all there. It has Milah’s death, Killian losing his hand, getting deceived and visiting the witch."

"Where did you find this?" Belle asks, turning to look at the pages over Killian's shoulder. 

"It must have fallen behind the shelf at some point, it was wedged between it and the wall all the way at the bottom." 

"Brilliant," Belle whispers, and when Emma turns to Killian, he is brightly beaming at her, as if he can tell that this find brought her so much closer to actually believing all the madness that is happening around them. 

"And," she says, holding up the slip of paper that she has kept between her fingers. "I think I know what to do next." 

They make a plan — and not one that the rest of the girls like. Killian still has the map in his satchel that he used to find the witch's cabin the first time around, and even though the town has changed a lot over the past few hundred years, they can get a general idea from natural landmarks and as soon as they are out of the town, Emma will cast a locator spell on the witch's parchment from the journal to take them the rest of the way there. 

"I just don't understand why just the two of you are going," Mary Margaret argues, and not for the first time. "You don't have to go alone, so I don't see why you're insisting on doing just that." 

"Admit it, darling," Killian says, leaning closer to bump his shoulder against hers. "You just want to get me alone." 

Emma rolls her eyes at him, hoping that it is enough to hide the blush that rises to her cheeks when she realizes that he's actually _right_ — he's growing on her, damn it, and she is actually beginning to like spending time with him.

Though neither of these reasons are the ones behind her insistence that they go alone. "This is a journey that Killian and I should take together, just the two of us," Emma says quickly, trying not to wince at how hopeful that sounds. "Besides, he's an excellent swordsman and I'm a magic-wielder. I'm sure we're more than capable of taking care of anything that we come across on this journey." 

Finally, Mary Margaret smiles in response to this, and again Emma tries not to wince at how hopeful _she_ looks.

"We should get home and prepare for this adventure, though," Belle says, always the voice of reason. "Plus then the two of you can get ready to fly back home tomorrow." 

“Can I ask you a favor first, ladies?” Killian asks, pushing away from the table, and Emma turns her attention towards him. “This is one of the places where one would go to procure new information, right?” 

Emma nods, and he nods in return. 

“What do I have to do to borrow a few books? To help me learn about the four hundred years of updated technological advancements that I have missed.”

Emma turns to Belle, who is already digging through her purse to find her employee ID. “Of course,” she says. “Whatever I can do to help.” 

“I’d like to spend some time to peruse what’s available,” he says, making his way out of the room. “I’ll be back before too long.”

In what Emma realizes immediately is an out-of-character goodbye for him, he leaves the room without another word. She watches as he walks away from their room, heading away from their corner of the library, and by the time he has turned the corner and exited her line of sight, she realizes Ruby is trying to talk to her, though she heard none of it. 

“What?” 

“I said, what do you think you’re going to do?” 

“What do you mean ‘what am I going to do’? I’m going to see what we can learn about him and this — this witch that cursed him to try to get him back where he needs to be.”

“What does that mean?” Mary Margaret asks, dropping the pen from her hand onto the notebook in front of her. 

“You know,” she tries, twirling the end of her ponytail around her pointer finger. “He has to have something…" She shakes her head, not even sure exactly what she is trying to say. Not even sure what the excuse she is trying to make is. "... Somewhere he can… somewhere…” It’s still too much to try to take in, too much to try to take as seriously as her friends want her to. 

When she looks up at Belle, she is also shaking her head. “If the stories are true, and if what he’s been telling us is true, he’s been a statue since the 1600s. That means he has nowhere, no one, no home. Nothing except us, the people that were there when the curse was broken.” 

Emma shrugs, trying to avoid anyone else’s gaze. She supposes it could be worse; she at least has friends that are willing to help her figure out whatever the hell her life has become. If she was alone, just her and Killian, it would be a completely different story. 

One where she never kissed a damned statue in the first place. Never broke a True Love curse on a drunken dare. Never brought an incredibly attractive man back to life to follow a prophecy, _apparently_. 

“I just…” she tries, holding her head in her hands, and then repositions herself to lean back in the uncomfortable wooden chair, focusing her eyes on the ceiling. “I have no idea what any of this means. What am I supposed to do with him? How do I explain to customs that he has no passport because he was born in 1580-whatever and has been a statue for four hundred years when I want to go back to America? I barely make enough money to sustain myself, nonetheless this new person, who has none of the skills or knowledge he needs to get a job. Is he going to live in the spare bedroom for the rest of my life?” 

Mary Margaret reaches over to gently run her hand across Emma’s back. “But he’s your True Love. That has to mean something.”

Emma grinds her jaw together, squeezing her eyes shut before snapping her head to the side to look at her friend. “Not at the moment it doesn’t. My relationship literally just fell apart. I wasn’t — I wasn’t even ready to find some gorgeous Berkshire guy to have a quick fling with and never speak to again, so I definitely wasn’t ready to break some bullshit _one True Love_ curse on a drunk dare. You can’t just — love doesn’t just work like that.”

Ruby leans across the table towards Emma, worry painted across her face. “So what do you think you’re going to do?” she asks, her voice soft. 

Emma crosses her arms on the table in front of her, resting her forehead on top of them. “At least I don’t have to leave for America in the morning,” she reminds them, simultaneously changing the subject. She really doesn’t know what to say. Thankfully, none of her friends push her any further.

"Besides," Belle adds. "We don't want to keep you two from travelling back home any longer than we need to." 

Mary Margaret smiles, no doubt thinking of David and their two-year-old son back at home, but Ruby just waves her hand, dismissing the thought. 

"All I have to look forward to back at home is going back to work, and even saying that I'm _looking forward_ to it is a stretch." 

"Ruby," Emma groans, not wanting to have this argument again, but there's no need once Mary Margaret speaks again. 

"Whether you like it or not, Ruby Lucas, you're getting on that plane with me tomorrow and going back to Boston." 

Huffing, she crosses her arms over her chest, looking even more like a teenager when she adds a roll of her eyes. "Ugh, _fine_." 


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning, with Ruby and Mary Margaret on either side of Emma's duffel bag on the backseat of her newly-acquired worn-down yellow Bug, she drops them off at the airport, hugging each of her friends until the security guards head over to ask her to leave — and then she and Killian are on their own adventure. 

Emma follows the GPS towards the spot they decided the night before would be their starting point, a walking trail into the woods around the far edge of the town, whose relation to mountains and streams made Killian believe was part of his old map, and a good starting point for their journey. 

"So, let me get this straight, love," he says, his eyes still set on her phone in the holder connected to the dashboard. "On this little device, you can access any map with just the press of a button?" 

Emma smiles, looking towards him out of the corner of her eye. She found him the night before with the books from the library spread out on the table in front of him, but with his attention focused instead on the owner's manual for the fridge, which he found going through the drawers in the kitchen. It was then she was able to really look at the pile of books he got from the library: a collection of history textbooks, a few books on transportation, some on scientific advancement, and a large book titled "Medicine Since the Middle Ages." 

"It can do much more than that," she says, then pauses before shaking her head. "But I'm not sure that you're quite ready for that quite yet." 

When she glances at him again, she notices his eyes have gone wide. 

“Another day, Killian.” He nods, but does not stop staring at the screen as it changes, informing them they have reached the destination. “For now, it’s time to walk.” She puts the car in park, somewhat surprised how quickly they got to the end of the GPS’ directions. 

“Right.” 

He climbs out of the car as she does, holding his old map in his hand while Emma stares down at her own piece of parchment: the spell the witch gave Killian that turned him into a statue in the first place. 

It’s a foolproof plan, really: Killian with a four-hundred-year old map and Emma with a location spell for a woman that might not even be alive anymore. She’s almost afraid to look at the parchment after she casts the spell on it, but she does anyway — though that does not make her less surprised when it works, the parchment shimmering as it floats in front of them. 

Eyes wide with surprise, Killian tucks the map back in his satchel and turns to her. “Ready?” 

She nods, reaching out to take his hand before she overthinks exactly what that means. 

“Let’s go find a witch.” 

As the parchment begins to lead them into the woods, one of Emma’s hands wrapped around Killian’s as the other emits a warm magical glow, suspending the parchment before them, she realizes that she has never felt as confident with her magic as she seems to when she is near him — though she tries to avoid what  _ that  _ means about them, as well. 

For a few minutes, they stay as silent as the woods around them, Killian’s thumb moving in soft circles against the back of her hand, and he can swear that he can feel her magic moving through him. It is unlike any other feeling he has ever experienced, and only makes him more drawn to her, though he did not think it possible. 

And the connection brewing between them only makes him want to recall his tale to her even more. 

“I convinced Milah that coming with me was the only way to save her from the vile, cowardly man she had married,” he says, his voice soft, and he can feel the emotion that rises through her, the surprise and the confusion.

“Killian, you don’t have to,” she interjects, her words coming quickly, but he shakes his head. 

“I want to, though, love,” he says, squeezing her hand, “He was a monster, with a heart we all believed  incapable of love. And it didn’t take much convincing, because she loved me just as much as I loved her, so we ran. Ran from him and all his terror. For a while, we were happy, far from his reach and able to live in harmony as we sailed the seas together. Time passed, more than a year, and I thought her husband had forgotten about us, until one day, he appeared on my ship, just like magic, and said he could not stand that she chose to stay with me over returning to him. Over the time Milah and I had spent happily aboard the  _ Jolly Roger _ , he had convinced himself that I — because how could I be anything but a cruel, heartless pirate — had stolen her away; but I loved her with everything I had, and she loved me in return, and that was a fact he could not live with.”

He stops, Emma stopping right beside him, and takes a deep, shaky breath. It’s almost too much to handle, so much sadness and grief, and the feelings he has not been able to feel over the last four hundred years suddenly come flooding back to him. He tries his best to bite them down, and the tears that fill his eyes go no further. “Or, perhaps more fittingly,” he continues, trying to cover his grief with anger, “a fact that he could not have  _ her  _ live with, because he tore her heart from her chest so there was nothing I could do to save her and watched, laughing like a maniac, as she died in my arms.”

Emma says nothing, but she does not have to. Everything she could say, he can find in her eyes as she stares up at him, in the hum of her magic that he feels in his bones through their still-connected hands, in the tears that she does not manage to hold back as well as he does. But the sadness that fills her bright green eyes is almost too much for him to handle, and he turns his eyes back down to the forest floor, softly pulling them back on their way ahead. 

“He and I sparred on the deck for a while, and I was a much better swordsman than he ever could have been, but when he added his dark magic into the mix, he found his advantage and took the upper hand. He disarmed me, so I found a rigging hook on the deck and stabbed him in the chest with it before he chopped off my hand and they both fell to the deck, but he picked up my hand before he disappeared. When the ship’s doctor fixed up my arm, I asked that he build a brace that I could put the hook in, a constant reminder of everything he took from me when he killed Milah. 

“I sought vengeance against the man for a few years, longing to hurt him the way he hurt me, and I searched all of the known lands to try to find a way to defeat him. But I never found anything, until one day, one of the men who found a place on my ship told of a story he heard once, a story of a witch that knew how to defeat the darkness that took Milah from me, though I realized too late that it was a trick. He led me here, through this very forest, and to the witch, who gave me a potion and marked a spot on my map for me to find. I followed through with her instructions, drank the potion, and when I went to read the spell from the parchment, it turned out not to be a spell, but a curse. I didn’t realize until it was too late, and I was turned into a statue in mere moments.”

Even after he finishes the story, Emma remains silent. But he can still feel what she is feeling, the anguish and sadness that makes her heart pound. 

He wonders if she can feel his, too, if this connection between them goes in both directions. 

He definitely hopes it does. 

“Wait,” she says suddenly, stopping exactly where she is and pulling her hand away from his. He immediately misses the warmth of her hand in his, misses the connection it gave them, but she holds her hands up in front of them, a warm light radiating from them as she takes a cautious step forward with her eyes squeezed shut. He watches closely, unmoving, as she slowly opens her eyes, then sees them widen.

“What is it, love?” he asks, almost afraid to hear the answer, but then she reaches behind her to find his hand, pulling him the half-step forward to stand beside her — and he sees it, too: the thick layer of fog that has suddenly appeared around them, coming from nowhere. 

He turns around, trying to figure out exactly what they’ve gotten themselves into, only to find that the fog now extends as far as he can see in every direction. 

“Weird,” she says, breaking the thick silence that has settled between them with the fog. “That wasn’t there a moment ago.” 

But even in the fog, she can see the smile that lights up Killian’s face as they begin to take quick steps in the same direction they had been travelling. 

“We’re almost there.” 

“How do you know that?” 

“Because this happened the last time I was here. And if a witch’s spells really do die with them, it must mean she is still alive.” 

She is about to comment her agreement, but the words get stuck in her throat after they take another step, the fog disappearing as quickly as it appeared, a chill running down her spine, and a small cottage appearing where there were only trees just moments before. It’s quaint, can’t have more than a few rooms, and has a billow of smoke coming from the chimney. 

_ Purple  _ smoke.

“Holy shit,” Emma breathes. “It — did it work? Is that it?” 

Killian’s eyes are wide in disbelief, but he still manages to nod his head. 

“That’s her.” 

“What should we do?” she whispers, terrified to move. She’s seen many things in her years, especially since she has become a magic-wielder, but some things in this world still manage to surprise her. 

And the fact that the locator spell worked on a four-hundred year old piece of parchment and led them to a cottage in the middle of the English woods is one of these surprises. 

So was bringing a statue to life by kissing it, but she’s at least starting to get used to having him around — not that she would admit it to anyone. 

Killian, however, does not seem as surprised by this turn of events, smirking at her even as he squeezes her hand. “Well, love, I suggest we knock, or is that no longer the custom in this world?” 

She knows that he is right, but that doesn’t keep her from rolling her eyes at his sarcasm. 

“Yes, okay, we  _ knock _ ,” she says, taking careful steps towards the cottage. If she weren’t so freaked out, she would be impressed by the small garden that they walk through, which seems to have fruits and vegetables on one side and herbs on the other; would think the stone and wood architecture is adorable. 

But, yeah, she’s freaked out instead. 

Killian knocks on the large wooden door with the curve of his hook, refusing to release his grip on her hand — the only sign that he is anywhere near as apprehensive as she is. It swings open almost immediately, and they both take a careful look around them before walking through it together, which Emma is almost thankful for. 

_ Almost _ , save the part of her that is still terrified of this whole adventure, scared to learn what it might mean about her. 

The room is about what she expected: open, with a wooden table and updated kitchen to her right, the walls going up to the angled ceiling everywhere except the loft. The interior is an odd mix of almost every style of decor, from rustic wooden bookshelves to a bright red retro refrigerator to a large wall-mounted television that takes up most of the wall it’s on. 

But the weirdest part is definitely what she finds in the center of the room: a woman that does not look much older than she does, in a beige pantsuit, her dark hair pulled into a high bun, standing over a smoking cauldron. 

_ Purple  _ smoke. 

"Captain Jones," she says, not even bothering to look up from her cauldron. "I've been expecting you." 

Emma's eyes snap to Killian, who is staring at the witch in disbelief. "Beg your pardon?" 

This makes the woman turn her attention towards them, taking a long moment to very obviously look over the two of them from head to toe and back before turning back down to the cauldron. "I've been waiting for you to show up here. I could sense your curse had been broken, and I was wondering how long it would take you to decide to test your luck and see if I'm still here." 

"Well, it must be my lucky day then," he says, his voice just short of a growl, and Emma can see the muscles of his jaw ticking in anger as he stares at the witch. 

This finally gets her full attention, and she moves a few steps closer to them, leaving the cauldron behind, though Emma notices the spoon she was using continuing to stir, not slowing. "It really is your lucky day, Captain," she says, stopping a few feet from them. "I've been waiting for a very long time to help you." 

Her words seem to cause some of his anger to dissipate, the tension in the air lessening slightly. 

“Excuse me?" 

Her features soften, the hardness in her dark brown eyes almost disappearing. "I've regretted what I did to you for over three hundred years." 

Her words seem to catch Killian off guard — and Emma, too, though not nearly as much. 

"And you didn't do anything about it?" 

"There was nothing I could do," she answers quickly, wringing her hands in front of her. "Only your True Love could break the curse, that's how he made me write it, so even after I came to regret all of the things I did for that monster, all I could do was wait for your curse to be broken in order for me to help you." 

It's Emma's turn to speak up. "I'm afraid I'm going to need more of an explanation than that, and I'm sure Killian agrees." 

They both turn towards him, but he just nods. 

"Of course," she says, walking around them and into the kitchen. "Would you like some tea? It's a rather long story." 

Killian, of course, accepts her offer for tea, though Emma instead requests a glass of water. Once they're all settled around the small wooden table, the witch starts her story: 

"I was young and naive when I was a student of Rumpelstiltskin's —" 

"Wait, wait, I'm going to need to stop you right there, witch," Emma says, holding her hands up, and while the witch rolls her eyes, she lets Emma interrupt. “You can’t mean, like,  _ Rumpelstiltskin  _ Rumpelstiltskin, right? Spins straw into gold? Makes deals for people’s firstborns?” 

Both the witch and Killian nod. 

“That’s how I came to be a student of his in the first place, because of a deal he made with my mother.” 

“Because he saved her from an unhappy arranged marriage by turning straw into gold?” Emma asks, completely joking, but the witch’s face stays emotionless. 

“Yes.” 

Emma sets her head in her hands for a moment, and the other two do her the favor to staying silent as she tries to wrap her head around all she’s hearing. 

“Also, my name is Regina, not  _ witch _ ,” she says, obvious annoyance in her voice. 

“Sorry,” Emma mumbles. “I honestly hadn’t even thought about it, so I am — I really am sorry.” 

Regina just nods. 

In the silence around her, pieces start clicking into place, but they only seem to lead to more questions. “Okay, so, you were a student of… Rumpelstiltskin’s.” The words still feel weird on her tongue, even if Regina is claiming them to be the truth. She turns to Killian. “You said that Regina’s teacher was the man whose wife you stole—” 

“I didn’t steal anyone, love,” he argues, a bite to his voice that she hadn’t heard before that almost makes her cringe. “Milah chose to come with me.” 

Her eyes falling to the table, Emma nods, wishing she hadn’t just made that mistake. “Right, sorry.” 

Another terribly awkward beat passes. “But yes, you’re right,” he says finally, his voice much softer. “Milah was Rumple’s wife.” 

This is just as unbelievable as the existence of Rumplestiltskin in the first place, but she’s trying to keep an open mind. 

“Can I get back to my story now?” 

For a witch that’s waited four hundred years to help Killian, Regina sure is impatient. 

Emma nods. 

“Thank you,” she says in a huff. “ _ As I was saying _ , when I was younger, I was young and stupid and wanted to do anything to prove to him that I was a worthy student, and at that time, it included cursing all those he asked me to. But I’ve — well, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and I’ve realized since then that Rumple was simply using me as a means to an end, a pawn to accomplish what he would not be able to alone.” She pauses, takes a sip from her cup of tea, and then turns her attention towards Killian. “So, yes, Captain, if I could have broken your curse on my own, I would have, but since only your True Love could break the curse, I’ve just been waiting for you to find me so I can help acclimate in your new life here, if you’ll allow me that.” 

Killian leans back on his chair, stretching his arm out behind her shoulders, obviously contemplating everything Regina has told them. 

“What became of Rumpelstiltskin?” he asks after a moment. 

Regina’s posture straightens, her eyes widening for a moment before they turn down to the table. 

“He, uh,” she starts, then takes a deep breath and looks back up at Killian. “No one knows, honestly. He continued to wreak havoc around the area for a while with curses and deals and — you know,  _ magic always comes with a price _ ’ing everyone he comes in contact with, but then the stories… they just stopped. Some said he got involved in one of the wars, got killed in battle, traveled to a different realm and never returned, or made a deal with someone whose magic was stronger than his,  _ darker  _ than his. I tried my best to keep up with the stories, to keep tabs on where he was — if you’re interested, I still have the book I used to keep all my notes about it — but then the rumors stopped.”

“When?” 

“About a hundred years after you were cursed.” 

Killian softly hits his closed fist against the table a few times, his eyes squeezed shut. 

The room sits in silence, save the steady, unceasing  _ thump thump thump  _ of Killian’s fist. 

Until: “And no one has spoken of him for almost three hundred years?” Killian’s voice is soft, almost trembling, and Emma surprises herself by reaching out to rest her hand on Killian’s arm, ceasing his movements, but even as she trails her hand up his forearm to lace her fingers through his, his eyes remain on the table and hers remain on Regina. 

And then she feels what he feels, and it is almost too much:  _ fear.  _ Paralyzing, debilitating, bone-chilling fear that chills her much deeper than her bones, and she turns to see how it is written over his features.

It’s not. Of all the expressions that she has seen cross his face since he came to life, she’s pretty sure she has yet to see his face as emotionless, as stoic, as it is in this moment. This fear is unlike anything she has ever felt, and Killian doesn’t even look afraid.

She wishes she knew what she could do to help him, to calm him — and that scares her. 

They both seem to realize that Regina has not answered his question at the same time, and when they raise their eyes to her, she is watching Killian, brown eyes filled with uneasiness, as she worries the edge of her thumbnail between her teeth.

She practically  _ feels  _ the angry, worried grind of his jaw. The way his heart races, pounding in time with hers. 

“Regina?” she asks, knowing that, while Killian may look emotionless, he definitely does not feel the same. 

She shakes her head. “No. Nothing. No one has seen him, heard about him, or spoken of him for three hundred years. The name ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ is not one that people still discuss.” She gestures to Emma, though her eyes never leave Killian’s face. “Not beyond children’s stories, fairy tales.” 

Slowly, she feels him start to calm. There is still a nagging fear pushed behind everything else, a fear that perhaps this man could have managed the impossible and remained alive and well for three hundred years without anyone knowing about it, however unlikely it may be. 

“We would know,” she says finally, her voice much softer, soothing, even. It’s not something Emma thinks fits her demeanor that well, trying to soothe Killian, but it seems to do the trick, his pounding heart returning to a normal pace, until he releases her hand to wrap his around the almost-empty tea cup. 

Finally, Killian nods, content with all Regina has told him, and finishes his cup of tea. 

But Emma is not as content, and is perhaps more confused than she was when they got here, and she runs her finger along the rim of the almost-empty glass of water, needing something to focus on as she asks the question at the forefront of her mind. 

“So, uh… how do we undo all this?” 

Her question is only met with silence and incredulous stares. 

“Excuse me?” Regina scoffs, but it is Killian’s hurt “I beg your pardon?” that really gets to her. 

She cannot even respond. 

“You’ve already undone it,” Regina says, and Emma practically hears her roll her eyes, since she still cannot bring herself to move her eyes from the glass. “You broke the curse. You freed him. That’s the end of it.” 

The words Belle said the day before rattle around her head once more:  _ “... he has nowhere, no one, no home. Nothing except us, the people that were there when the curse was broken.”  _ Squeezing her eyes shut, she tries to stop her mind from reeling around exactly what these words might mean.

She doesn’t want to think any more about what that means for their relationship, what it means for  _ her _ . While she had to have known deep down it was never going to happen, a small piece of her clung to the hope that the witch was going to offer them an easy answer, another explanation for everything that has happened to them. Alas, all Regina has done is confirm what she’s still too afraid to admit to herself. 

She and Killian are _True Loves_. There’s really no denying it anymore, as much as that scares her. And she doesn’t know what to do about it. 

So she just stays silent. They do not spend much longer in Regina’s cottage, though Emma is a little amazed when Regina conjures a full set of paperwork for Killian from thin air: British passport, birth certificate, driver’s license, Naval papers, and who knows what else. Killian’s not entirely sure what all of them mean, but he takes the whole stack, plus a few stacks of money, and drops it all in his satchel nonetheless. 

“Thank you again,” he says, shaking her hand as they stand on the stoop outside the cabin. 

She smiles warmly at them, not quite fitting with the rest of the demeanor she’s shown them, but Emma appreciates it nonetheless. 

“Of course,” Regina says. “And really, if there is anything else I can do for you, don’t hesitate to reach out.” 

There is, of course, so much Emma wants to ask Regina. About practicing magic. About communities of witches. About all of these things that Ingrid barred her from, or perhaps simply did not know about herself. But the part of her that longs for these answers is drowned out by the realization that she has to get back to her life, back to some semblance of normalcy that she had before all this happened — before moving, before Neal’s heartache, before befriending and then  _ bringing to life _ a damn statue with the bluest eyes and the brightest smile she has ever seen. 

For a moment, it helps still the pounding of her heart, knowing that there is someone who can help them — 

Until she realizes this means she now has to walk back through the woods with him. 

Drive him back into the city. 

She’s all he has in the world — the fact that scares her the most — and she now has a responsibility to help him live in a world vastly different than the one he last knew four hundred years before.

Most of their walk back through the woods is silent, Emma’s arms crossed over her chest. She has never felt more lost in her life, and she just packed up her life and moved to a different continent. She can’t have a  _ True Love  _ — there’s no such thing, of course. She still believes that one of these times, she’ll blink, open her eyes, and find that it’s all been a dream. 

She’s not entirely sure how much of it she wants to be a dream, where she wishes it would have started. 

Anything is better than this being her reality. 

“Why are you so desperate to get rid of me?” he asks finally, breaking the silence between them with an obvious anger in his voice, though she also senses a hint of sadness. 

Both of which she understands.

She can’t even bring herself to look at him. But she stops, her eyes squeezed shut and her head turned down to the forest floor. She doesn’t even know where to start. 

“Do you know that I was ready to marry him?” she says quickly, spilling the secret that she hadn’t told anyone. 

“What?” he asks, his eyes snapping to her. “Who?” 

“Neal. I decided that I was ready to commit to him, and then he breaks up with me not even three days later. And then it all comes unraveled — his cheating, his lying, everything. He tossed me aside, deciding that  _ maybe  _ I wasn’t actually good enough, trading me in for the  _ next great thing _ . And it — Jesus, Killian, it broke me.” Finally, she looks up at him, still afraid of what she knows she’s going to find in those  _ damned  _ blue eyes of his: sincerity. She’s not ready for that. “That’s part of why I came over here in the first place, was to start over, closing my heart to the world so that no one can ever hurt me like that again. 

“And then I’m over here for a few weeks, still trying to… recover from everything that’s happened to me, and this whole  _ thing _ between us comes up, and I — I’m just not ready for this. I can’t deal with this.” 

For a moment, he is silent; and then, he places his index finger under her chin and pulls her gaze back to his. “Emma,” he whispers. “You broke my curse, and that must have a meaning. But if it’s time you need, then time is what I will give you. I waited four hundred years for you to come into my life, my love. If I have to wait a bit longer for your heart to heal, then I will stand aside and let you heal.”

She's moved by his words and reaches out to rest her hand against his cheek, but before she can make contact, she realizes that the mere thought of wanting to do that scares her, and she backs away, wide-eyed, before taking off through the forest without another word. 

_ What the hell is she doing? What the hell is she  _ thinking _?  _

But at the same time:

_ Why is she still questioning all of this? What more evidence does she need to prove that this is her reality now?  _

Killian’s story? Check. 

Historical evidence, found at a research library? Check. 

The Captain’s Log from the ship,  _ confirming  _ Killian’s story? Check. 

The damn witch that cast his curse in the first place? Check. 

But somehow, she’s still trying to convince herself that it’s not real. 

That  _ he _ , for some reason, isn’t real.  _ Killian _ , who, through a thick layer of innuendos and leather, is soft and kind and funny; who seems to wholeheartedly believe that they really are True Love’s. And she… well, she doesn’t blame him. 

Even as she thinks it, she’s not sure what it means. 

Okay, that’s not true. She knows what it means: that she is coming to terms with… whatever is happening between them. But, at the same time, she knows that she’s fighting with it, as well. 

“Swan, wait up,” Killian calls from behind her, and for the briefest moment, she debates not waiting for him. But he did her the service of giving her some time alone with her thoughts, and for that she is thankful. 

So she stops. She doesn’t turn to see how far behind he is, though she can hear the crunching of the leaves beneath his boots. She doesn’t turn towards him when he reaches her side. She even pauses for a moment and lets him walk ahead before she follows. 

A part of her is afraid to walk beside him, worried that he will try and take her hand as he did on their first time through the forest — worried that he will rely on whatever weird-ass connection they have to figure out what is going through her head right now. 

Honestly, she wouldn’t blame him. She wouldn’t blame him, but she also doesn’t want that right now. 

Instead, she wants… 

Okay, she doesn’t know what she wants. 

That’s not exactly the truth, either. She wants normalcy, something from the past thirty years to remain as it always has. Everything has changed, everything at once, and she realizes as she watches him walk a few steps in front of her that perhaps  _ that  _ is what is keeping her from accepting what has become her new normal. She is no longer able to deny what is between them — she brought him back to life, broke his curse,  _ her _ , not her magic. Somehow, she is his True Love. Really, she has no idea what that is supposed to mean, and it doesn’t allow her to take back any of the hurt and the anguish that she voiced to him earlier, but it’s a start. 

She still needs time to heal, time to find her way in this new lifestyle of hers. But she can do it with Killian beside her. They can find their way together. 

She picks up her pace for a moment, moving to walk beside him again. They can get through this, can figure out what the hell they’re supposed to be doing —  _ together.  _

“Alright, so,” she says, turning down the music and breaking the silence for the first time since he caught up with her in the forest. “Since Ruby and Mary Margaret went back home, I was thinking you could just take the spare bedroom in my apartment where Ruby was staying—” 

“Swan, really, that’s not necessary.” 

She pulls her eyes off the road for a moment to glance at him. “Of course it’s necessary, Killian. What else are you going to do? I broke this damn curse, the least I can do now is give you a place to stay.” 

Mulling over her words, he remains silent in the seat next to her. He has never met a more frustrating woman than Emma Swan, he knows that for sure. A brilliant, beautiful, headstrong woman that broke a four-hundred-year old curse and still doesn’t believe that they are meant to be together. That they are True Loves. She still wants to get rid of him, to solve all of this by making everything  _ go back to normal _ , while he falls deeper in love with her. 

Liam would have called him a  _ right idiot  _ for starting to fall for this woman so quickly, but he really can’t be blamed for it.  He meant everything he said to her in the forest. Technically, looking back, he realizes that he has never said anything to her that he did not mean wholeheartedly, from  _ I was hoping it would be you  _ to when he told her that he will wait for her heart to heal. 

He knows all about that. 

The weirdest part of the last four hundred years wasn’t that he spent them as a statue, but that he spent them with a conscience, that he could watch over the people passing him and slowly take in the changes that took place right before his eyes. 

That he could think, even though he couldn't move. 

He spent four hundred years in his own head, and if there is one thing he knows about after going through that, it is the time required to heal. Half the time he spent as a statue was spent broken-hearted, thinking back on his time with Milah, on how much he loved her. 

In the moments he has spent watching Emma, he notices the same sad look in her eyes that he is sure he would have found in his own had they not been lifeless. Sadness, despair, and perhaps even a touch of regret. Regret for putting hope into something that should have been hopeless — a married woman, a cheating man — and having everything fall to pieces around you. 

But he has to break the silence between them, silence that may just shatter him if it continues to grow. 

“I think I should find myself a job,” he says, quieting the voices in his head by speaking what’s on his mind. 

“Killian, it’s a very different world now—”

“You don’t think I am aware of that?” he asks, a bite to his voice that he almost didn’t mean for there to be. “But I promise you, I will do anything to prove I’m not useless.” 

A beat passes between them, before she speaks softly. “I don’t think you’re useless.” 

It’s just about the nicest thing she has ever said to him, spoken barely loud enough to be heard over the engine, but it’s a start, aided by her soft fingers wrapping around his hand where it rests on his knee. 

He won’t rush her, will not do anything to try and get her to admit to anything she is not ready for, but this is a good start, especially after losing so much ground during their conversation with the witch. 

▫️▪️▫️▪️⭐▪️▫️▪️▫️ 

The most distressing thing about sharing her apartment with seventeenth-century Killian Jones proves not to be his unfamiliarity of technology or his inability to fit in well in the modern day, which, though it seems to be getting better and better with each day, frustrates him to no end — no, instead, Emma finds most of her stress around her new roommate to be centered around just how  _ immaculate _ he keeps everything. For the first time in her life, Emma finds every item within her apartment to suddenly have a "spot," somewhere deemed specifically for each thing to belong. Her bathroom is more organized than she ever felt it needed to be, from the medicine cabinet to the bottom of the vanity to the  _ damn shower; _ her cups and mugs now have a specific order within the cabinet; even each of the remotes and magazines on the coffee table now have a designated placement. 

Everything is clean. Emma almost doesn't know how to function — but given that he is struggling so much with everything else related to his new twenty-first century life, Emma tries her best to straighten up her life, too, making sure that she is doing what she can. 

It's not the easiest task, of course, but she assumes that putting her shoes away after taking them off and doing the dishes instead of leaving them in the sink is much easier than waking up after 400 years. 

But as her schedule changes, begins taking up more of her time, Killian finds himself alone in the apartment more often. 

Which is how he finds Will's, the bar only two blocks from the apartment. 

He quickly becomes a regular, finding a barstool of his own in the darkened corner, a spot which allows him to watch over the crowd that fills the bar each evening. He minds his own business, sometimes even bringing a book down with him, but usually he passes the time on his smart phone, reading articles, books, as much information as he can get his hands on. 

He tries to mind his own business, at least — until one night, when it becomes impossible. 

“You’re making — a huge mistake, you know,” the man a few seats down from him slurs, slamming his fist down on the dark granite of the bar. 

He’s been watching the man all night, immediately off-put by his demeanor as soon as he showed up. By Killian’s count, he’s on his fifth beer, and has been slowly making his way closer to Belle, sitting a few seats down from him and waiting for Will to finish his duties. 

(Killian has very much enjoyed watching the dalliance that has been brewing between them, still relatively new since he just introduced them only a few weeks before.) 

“I can assure you that I’m not the one making a mistake here,” Belle says, almost huffed under her breath, and he’s fairly sure that she specifically said it so that only he and the man beside her can hear it. 

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” he yells, whipping his head to face her, and even with all the space between them, Killian can see the drunken madness that fills his whole expression, from his dark brown eyes to the ticking of his stubble-covered jaw. 

“Take a hint,  ya derro , and leave me alone.” Her voice is calm, almost too quiet, but she still seems to be holding her ground, so Killian just takes another sip from his glass of rum and remains quiet. 

But he stands up, his barstool sliding out from beneath him, and for a moment Killian can swear that he sees the flash of violence cross the man’s face, the look he has seen for too many times just before the start of a fight. Killian almost jumps to his feet, ready to defend his friend, but before he can, the flash is gone, his expression turned to the anger from moments before. “How  _ dare _ you talk to me like that, you bitch!” 

Belle just scoffs, somehow not as angered by this whole situation as Killian is — or, if she is, she is much better at hiding it, not even turning to face him, her eyes set on the pint of beer in front of her. 

But when Killian watches him take a step in her direction, his hands squeezed into fists at his side, he can sit aside and watch no longer. 

Staying in his seat, he yells, “Oi, mate, I’d suggest leaving the lass alone if I were you.” Both sets of eyes whip towards him, Belle’s wide with surprise until they soften to an expression of gratitude. 

“This is none of your business,  _ mate _ ,” the man spits, taking two quick strides towards him, his back now to Belle. “So if I were you, I would suggest not eavesdropping on other people’s conversations.” 

“If you’re going to speak to her like that, I’m going to make it my business.” He still has not stood, but when the man takes another step in his direction, now within arm’s reach, he almost does. 

“Are you really going to stand up for her? To take her side in all this? All I wanted her to do is answer my fucking question, because I know that she knows where she is!” 

This statement catches Killian off-guard, his eyes flicking towards Belle, who is watching him, wide-eyed, and shaking her head. 

“That doesn’t give you the right to be a fustilarian.” 

The man’s eyes narrow, much of the anger on his face now replaced with confusion. “Excuse me?” 

Killian chuckles. “Your not knowing is half of the fun.” 

This doesn’t make him any less angry, though he turns his attention back to Belle to let some of it out. "Do you know this jackass? What's his deal?" 

At this, Belle smiles, and when she turns back to share a glance with Killian, he doesn't quite understand what it was supposed to mean until she speaks again: "I do, in fact, know this jackass. This is Killian, he's a colleague of mine. Killian, meet Neal Cassidy." 

He feels a few emotions rush through him simultaneously: surprise, anger, violent rage. Instead of acting on any of them, however, he reaches his hand out in an attempt for Neal to do the same, though his only response is to glare down at his outstretched hand, so Killian retracts the nicety. 

"A fustilarian  _ and  _ a bespawler." 

"Christ, Belle, you're friends with this bastard?" 

"Yeah, actually, I am, and he's a much better man than you will ever be." Pride surges through Killian — a good man is all he ever wanted to be, and if he were in a better scenario to thank Belle for her kind words, he would. 

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" 

He speaks up again: "It means you're a right wandought. How Emma ever loved you is a mystery to me." 

He doesn't realize quite what he's said — or, especially, what it reveals — until the expression on Neal's face changes to something much lighter than anger, and Belle whips around on her stool to stare at him, eyes wide with incredulity, since he has gone and done what she warned him not to before introducing them. 

"You — you know Emma?" Neal asks, all of his previous anger disappeared, replaced instead with something Killian can only describe as  _ hope _ . 

He jumps to a quick decision: "Aye, that I do. And I also know that you are the last person on Earth that she wants to see, so there is no use further inquiring about her." 

At this, Neal is no longer hopeful — instead, his anger returns, his dark eyes narrowed at him, though they flash to Belle for a moment when she chuckles in agreement. 

"Do you think you know what's best for her?" he asks, his voice much louder than it really needs to be in the practically-empty bar. 

Every response that comes to Killian's head is about their relationship, about the fact that he is her True Love, that he perhaps has a sense of what is good for her because of their connection — but he has a feeling that Neal would take to that idea about as nicely as Emma did, so he does not respond. Belle, however, is quick to jump in, instead. 

"We know that it bloody well isn't you, that's for damn sure." 

This time when he narrows his eyes, it is in Belle's direction, though it only lasts a moment before his expression softens again, this time into one of sadness, as he changes his strategy so obviously that it almost pains Killian. 

"I just…" he starts, then lowers his eyes to the floor, running his fingers through his sandy hair as he lets out a long breath. "I need to apologize to her. For everything I've done to her, I was — fuck, I'm just an idiot, okay? I want her to know that I realized that, and that I still love her. I'm stupid not to, I've realized that, and I… I just need her to know that." 

Killian has no sympathy for the man, and he assumes the same is true for Belle, until he turns to gauge her reaction and see that she is nodding softly at him. "I'm still not going to tell you where she is, but I can — the least I can do is pass on the message." 

"Can you tell her that I want to talk to her? It would…" — he even has the nerve to  _ smile _ — "It would mean a lot to me, Belle." 

Belle nods, a soft smile across her face to match Neal's. "Yeah, Neal, I'll do that." 

"Thank you," he replies, pulling money out of his wallet and setting it on the bar. "Thanks a lot." And then, he's gone. 

Killian is astounded, dumbfounded, beyond words, and just stares at Belle for a moment, agape. 

However, when she smiles, takes a small sip from the glass in front of her, and mumbles, "Get stuffed" just loud enough for Killian to hear, he feels a bit better. 

But has a plan nonetheless. 

▫️▪️▫️▪️⭐▪️▫️▪️▫️

The nights Emma is the most grateful for her new roommate are nights like this one, where she comes home from her shift after dark, exhausted and starving, to find Killian in the kitchen, working on one of the many recipes he has discovered through extensive internet usage and watching Food Network. 

Today was one of the worst, the hospital busier than it should be for a November night, and she was stretched thin for the last ten of her twelve-hour shift. The bright smile that spreads across his face as he turns to greet her  _ almost  _ makes up for some of it. 

Maybe, like, six hours of it. So, not completely, but maybe a little more than half. 

Because, she's come to realize, she  _ likes  _ him. She likes living with him, likes spending time with him, likes having him there to greet her after a long day (and,  _ yes _ , okay, she even likes how clean her apartment has been, likes the nights that they accidentally fall asleep on the couch together, likes how he always seems to have a small breakfast and a pot of coffee hot and ready for her when she wakes up, whether before dawn or in the middle of the day.) 

Part of her maybe even  _ likes  _ him, in the way the universe wants her to. He's caring, protective, and sweet, seems to actually care about her as a person — all of which are things Neal definitely wasn't. And, on top of all that, he understands her in ways other people don't — ways that she never expected another person to understand her. He can almost sense her moods, can tell when she needs to be left alone, when she needs a mug of hot chocolate, when she really just needs to eat. Every time she has gone to explain herself, to apologize — which she feels she's done more in the past month than before — Killian just smiles sweetly, usually setting his hand on hers or on her shoulder, and tells her it's unnecessary, that he somehow understands without her explanation. 

No matter how hard it is for her to admit it, their being True Loves would explain a lot of that. It would explain how he seems to know what she's going to say before she starts to say it, or how he's started to know things about her that she hasn't told him, about her childhood and her food preferences and her magic. 

She's assuming this is why Killian is not alone in the kitchen when she gets home, and why his guest is one of the last she would have expected, even if she has been thinking a lot about the last time they spoke. 

"Regina," she says, partially meaning it as a question. 

The woman just smiles, taking a sip from the wine glass sitting in front of her. "Hello, Emma. It's nice to see you again." 

Emma tries to return her smile, but she's fairly certain her face instead becomes something a lot more confused. "Yeah, uh, hi. Nice — nice to see you, too." 

Though it only lasts a moment, the silence that hangs between them is a heavy one. 

So Emma breaks it. "What, uh, are you doing here?" 

"Oh," she says, setting her wine glass down on the table. "I'm here to help you with your magic so you can hex away your ex-boyfriend." 

Emma truly has no response to this. She blinks. She blinks again. 

"In hindsight," Killian says finally, emerging from the kitchen with one of her kitchen towels slung over his shoulder, a look he absolutely stole from _Queer Eye_ 's Antoni. "I probably should have warned you about all of this." 

"Killian," Emma groans, dropping her backpack just inside the door, even though she knows Killian will either yell at her for it later, or just put it away himself. "What is that supposed to mean?" she asks, taking a seat next to Regina at the table, reaching across for what is left of the bottle of red wine. 

"I met Neal last night," Killian says, taking the seat on the opposite side of Regina. 

Again, Emma has no response to this. She think her mouth might actually be hanging open as she looks over at Killian. She takes a sip straight from the bottle of wine. 

"At the bar with Belle. He was looking for you, with some  cockamamie story about how sorry he is and how he's realized his mistake. And I knew that you've been wondering about Regina's magic, so I took the liberty of reaching out to her for some assistance with Neal, so that you could be sure that he didn't become a problem." 

At first, the main thing she feels is  _ anger _ — not only at Neal for coming all the way here, for chasing after her after everything he's done to her; but, for just a few moments, she's also mad at Killian for  _ taking the liberty  _ of reaching out to Regina, for not telling her about Neal. 

Until she realizes just how  _ stupid  _ it is to be mad at Killian. She has never met anyone like him, though she's not sure if it's because he's from four hundred years in the past and is just  _ very  _ old fashioned, or just because she's only ever known men to be assholes. Either way, in the weeks that have passed, since the night she  _ broke a curse  _ and  _ brought a statue back to life  _ (both of which are still a little mind-boggling to her, if she's being honest with herself), she has learned that Killian is nothing if not caring, honest, and always looking out for her best interests. 

Because he's  _ in love with her.  _ She knows that, and every time she asks herself what's keeping her from reciprocating, she can't quite answer. 

So, as quickly as it rolled through her body, her anger towards Killian disappears, leaving behind only anger towards Neal — an emotion has been simmering just below the surface for the last few months ( _ years _ ). 

He must see all of this cross her face over just a few moments, because when she raises her eyes to meet his again, he is watching her intently, picking up every small change in her features. 

She tries her hardest to smile, to show some sort of gratitude for what he has done, but she's fairly sure she has not convinced him. She turns to Regina, who has one eyebrow raised at her, waiting for her response. 

"Okay," is all she says for a moment, the room remaining silent and still, so she takes another sip from the bottle of wine. “So, where do we start?” 

Regina’s face lights up, something Emma didn’t even think was possible, and she sets down her glass of wine before turning her hands palm-up in front of her. Without even so much as flinching, she summons a sphere of white light in her left hand, and a small flame in her right. “First, we have to gauge where your magic skills are already.” 

Emma gulps, suddenly realizing that learning more about her magic means  _ practicing  _ her magic — something she hasn’t done for almost ten years, since Ingrid warned her that just using it to practice would be dangerous enough. 

Yet another lie. 

“There’s no need to be nervous, love,” Killian says, his voice as gentle as the hand that he places on top of hers on the table. “I’m living proof that you can do amazing things with your magic.” 

She’s thankful for him, for his calm and his kindness, but she’s still not sure. “I wasn’t  _ trying  _ to use my magic when I broke your curse, Killian. I haven’t  _ tried  _ to use my magic for years, after being told it was something I should hide away from the world.”

“If this isn’t what you want to do, Emma—” Regina starts, but Emma holds her hand up between them. 

“No, no, this… This is what I want, but that doesn’t make it any less terrifying.” 

Regina nods, her lips pinched into a thin line, and she turns both of her palms against the table after the magic in them disappears. “Alright,” she says, and nods again. “I think what we need to start with is maybe a bit of a conversation instead of just jumping right into the magic.” 

Emma takes a deep breath, obvious in the rise and fall of her shoulders. “Where do you want to start? My twenty-first birthday, where I lit the candle on my cupcake with a small fire I summoned without even knowing I did it? The list of accidents from the apartments I lived in after college? Meeting Ingrid by accident at the library, trying to figure out what the fuck was wrong with me?”

Regina sucks her breath in through her teeth, tapping the nails of her perfectly-manicured fingers against the table. 

Killian’s hand covering hers squeezes gently. 

“No,” Regina says, hitting her hand against the table. “I don’t want to know that. I don’t want to know any of that.” 

“Then what do you want?” She doesn’t mean to snap, but it’s already been a long-ass day, and it’s apparently not over yet. 

Regina blinks at her twice, her mouth slightly agape, as if taken aback by her tone. Which she doesn’t blame her for, because she’s a bit taken aback by her own tone. 

“What does it feel like?” Regina asks finally, her voice soft, though her eyes are still shooting daggers. 

Emma really doesn’t know how to respond, her breath taken from her lungs. This day has almost become too much. “What?” 

“When you use your magic, what does it feel like?” 

She squeezes her eyes shut, both hoping that she can conjure some memory that can answer Regina’s question, and that, once she opens them, Regina will be gone and this will all be a dream. She doesn’t manage the second, but she does manage the first. 

“It’s been — when l used it to find you in the woods, that was the first time in a while that I used it on purpose, but it’s always been… warm. Comforting, almost, like it was telling me that it would be okay.” Emma feels the warmth rush to her cheeks, hoping that what she is saying is the right answer — if there even is a right answer when it comes to all this — and the large smile that slowly grows across Regina’s face makes her feel a bit better. 

“That’s an excellent start, Emma,” Regina says, her voice warm to match her smile, and Emma begins to feel a bit better, the weight that has been on her shoulders since her twenty-first birthday begins to lighten. 

She can only stay awake enough to be helpful for another forty-five minutes, but in that time, she’s made some progress, both mentally and magically, and when she finally makes it to her bed, thankful that she doesn’t work until the next afternoon, she falls asleep with the growing warmth of her ever-present magic fighting to make itself known — and she does nothing to fight it. 


	3. Chapter 3

November turns to December, snow blanketing the ground. Emma and Killian fall deeper into a routine, depending on Emma’s schedule at the hospital and which days he goes to the bar before it opens. Even though he is up much later into the night, Killian somehow always gets up before her in the morning, making her breakfast with whatever he can find in the fridge. She imagines that his being up before the sun comes from his Navy days, no matter how long ago that was; and the fact that he only sleeps for a few hours each night has a connection to all the years he spent "asleep" as a statue, fear of missing anything further than the 400 years he watched pass before his unmoving eyes. While she is not the most expert cook, she tries her best to have something for lunch, unless she’s at the hospital. It really is just about the _least_ she can do.

(When she is at the hospital, Killian brings her lunch more often, knowing that whatever she packs or could buy at the hospital is far less healthy than what he brings her. She refuses to admit just how much she appreciates it, and how much she enjoys seeing Killian in the middle of the day.)

Especially because she’s… well, she hasn’t quite “come to terms” with what they are, but she has gotten closer.  _ True Love _ still seems like total bullshit, but the relationship that they’ve built since she “broke his curse” is far from bullshit, regardless of what brought them together in the first place. Because they’re friends, before anything else. They’re friends, and as much as Killian hopes that they can be more than that someday, he’s also been giving her more space than she expected, given just how much he believes in whatever they’re  _ destined  _ to be. 

And she’s thankful for him. She’s thankful for his friendship, for his rather uncanny ability to know exactly what he can do to make her feel better, and for the absolute spotlessness that seems to follow him around like a lingering shadow. She wouldn’t have admitted before just how unorganized her entire life was — and perhaps even just how much stress may have been caused because of it. 

But now it’s better. Now it’s  _ all  _ better. 

Though, to be honest, she can’t give Killian all of the credit, because at least some of it has to go to Regina. Regina, who has somehow found the overlap of the best times in both of their schedules to waltz into her apartment, usually carrying at least a small pile of books under her arm to continue to help Emma with her magic, at which she has slowly been getting better. Regina’s regular lessons, plus reading through the books loaned to her and small amounts of practicing on her own, has made her more confident in her abilities than she has ever been. 

Which is how they wind up here, with all the furniture moved to the edges of the living room and Emma and Regina sitting in the middle of the empty floor, Emma with her eyes squeezed shut and her hands held out in front of her, concentrating harder than she ever thought possible. Though she cannot see it, a warm orange glow surrounds her hands and her forearms, fading away after her elbows. Regina is both watching her intently and emitting her own hazy red glow from her hands, though she requires much less concentration to do so. 

“Can you feel him? Have you found him?” she asks after a few moments, intently watching her face for any movement. 

Even though her eyes are shut, Killian recognizes the look that passes over her face, even if he cannot see the widening of her eyes that almost always comes with it. 

Surprise. 

And when she nods, he notices from his seat on the other side of the room that Regina’s face twists into a similar expression. 

“Yes?” she asks, still trying to take in every detail of Emma’s face, even as she nods. “You can feel him?” 

Emma nods again, then slightly tilts her head to the side. “Yeah, I do, I — I can feel him. But he’s —  _ shit _ , he’s close.”

“What does that mean?” Regina asks, but Killian is afraid that he knows the answer, assuming that the strong chill the he feels rolling down his spine is because she also feels one rolling down her own. 

Their connection has grown stronger over the past few weeks, and he’s really hoping that it’s because she he started coming to terms with what has been brewing between them. He’s noticed her smiling at him more, choosing to spend more time with him, even coming to visit some nights at the bar after her shifts at the hospital, even staying later into the night after close while he helps clean up. Recently, he has found that he doesn’t always have to be touching her to feel what she is feeling, like right now. All he has to do now is concentrate, the same way she is currently concentrating on her magic. So, while she puts all of her energy into trying to find Neal, he is focusing on trying to figure out how she is feeling,  _ what  _ she is feeling. And this connection between them just proves to him (though he would never tell her) that their True Love is a big deal. He can’t quite explain just how he can tell that Neal is not just in England, but actually close by. So close by that he almost moves to say something, but before he can, the silence in the room is broken by a strong knock on the door, which causes both Emma and Regina to jump, Emma losing her concentration as they all turn their attention towards the apartment door. 

After a few moments, there is another knock, this one a little louder, but still none of them move to get it. 

But someone has to, so Killian leaves them where they are on the carpet and crosses over the apartment to open it. He is pleading with the universe, begging for his feeling to be incorrect, though when he opens the door, he’s never been more upset to be correct in his whole life. 

“Uh, hi?” Neal says from the other side of the door, and even through the blood boiling within his body that begins to hum in his ears, it is not loud enough to drown out the  _ holy shit _ that escapes Emma’s lips when she sees who is on the other side of the door. 

It takes Neal a moment to recognize him since their altercation at the bar was almost a month ago, but Killian can tell the exact moment it happens because the expression written all over his face changes from confusion to rage, joined by an angry “ _ You _ ,” spat out through gritted teeth. “What the fuck are you doing here?” 

“I live here,” he answers, as if it is the most obvious thing in the world. 

Behind him, Emma’s eyes are still wide, her breath caught in her throat but her lungs weighing close to a million pounds. 

Until she formulates a plan, pushing herself up off the floor and rushing to Killian’s side, just as Neal asks, “And what about Emma? I was told this was her apartment.” 

“Yeah, she lives here, too, she’s my—” 

Emma’s hand placed on his arm, gently pulling him back to let her stand beside him in the doorway, stops the  _ roommate _ from falling from his lips. 

“Hello, Neal,” she says, her voice completely lacking enthusiasm, which doesn’t surprise Killian; however, when she adds, “I heard you’ve met Killian, my boyfriend,” he finds himself much more surprised. Killian tries his hardest to stop the surprise from showing on his face, and when she slides her hand behind his back, curling her pointer finger through one of his belt loops, he slips his around her shoulders, trying his best to play along without giving anything away. 

Yes, their connection has grown stronger over the past few weeks, but that doesn’t stop her from continuing to surprise him every once in a while. 

Emma almost laughs at the way Neal’s jaw ticks with this new information. 

“How can we help you, mate?” Killian asks, not hesitating before stepping into his new role, tightening his arm around her shoulder and realizing that he has started to play with the soft ends of her ponytail.

“Well, I was hoping to apologize for everything I’ve done, to tell her —” he realizes that he’s still talking to Killian, so he turns his attention instead to Emma. “To tell  _ you _ that I was a complete and total idiot and that, if you would still have me, I still love you and want to be with you.” It takes everything in her not to roll her eyes, but she no longer tries to stop it when he adds, “But it seems you’ve packed up and moved on, so—” 

Killian opens his mouth to speak, but Emma beats him to it: “ _ I  _ moved on? Neal, you moved on before we even broke up. You were  _ cheating  _ on me, so if you’re a little hurt about the fact that I’ve found someone that actually seems to care about me and makes me happy and who I’m already more in love with than I ever was with you, I’m definitely not sorry.” 

She doesn’t realize exactly what she’s said until she feels Killian’s body tense up at it — but at the same time, she’s not sure why it surprises her as much as it does. It’s completely obvious, the fact that Neal’s feelings towards her can’t hold a candle to Killian’s, that Killian both cares about her and loves her far more than Neal ever did — and that she loves him back. Of _course_ she loves him back. Sure, she wishes with everything in her that she discovered it another way, that she realized it at a moment when Neal wasn’t standing by their apartment door, but she can’t even deny it anymore. 

She knows that she should turn to Killian, tell him somehow that she really meant it, wasn’t just saying things to make Neal go away, but she can’t bring herself to; so instead, she tightens her grip on his hip and  _ thinks _ it — though she has no idea if it even works. 

Neal, however, isn’t nearly as thrown off by this as both of them are; he just scoffs. “God, Ems, you don’t have to be such a bitch about it.” 

Here, quite a few things happen simultaneously. The most obvious of them is that Killian, filled with newfound rage towards the man in front of him, unwraps his arm from around Emma’s shoulder and takes a step towards him, pushing him to the other side of the threshold while he snarls “I think it’s time for you to leave, mate,” through gritted teeth. 

He also reaches out to grab the collar of Neal’s shirt in his fist, but before he can make contact, the second thing happens: Emma, with her eyes squeezed shut once more, holds both of her palms up towards Neal, emitting a soft white glow from her hands, which sends him into the wall behind him, not quite far enough to knock him off his feet, but enough to catch him off guard. It only takes him a moment to regain himself, and when he does, he is even angrier — though when he moves to step back into the place Emma pushed him from, he finds he cannot, finds that he is unable to come any closer to the apartment. 

Because of the third thing that happened, the protection spell that Regina cast over the threshold the moment Emma pushed him out of the way. Only Emma can hex him away completely, but Regina at least managed to make it so that he could not come any closer to the apartment, and will find himself unable to re-enter the building once he leaves.

“Leave.” It’s all Emma needs to say, and when she reaches down to wrap her hand around Killian’s this time, it has nothing to do with Neal. 

For the longest beat, he doesn't move, his eyes narrowing towards her. She can see the tense of his jaw, the flaring of his nostrils when he breathes out, but he doesn't move to leave, not right away. And then, without another word, he turns on his heel and stalks back down the hallway. Once the elevator doors close behind him, Emma finally steps back into the apartment and closes the door behind them, eyes wide as they find Regina, still sitting exactly where she was on the floor of the apartment. 

"Show me how you did that," she whispers, once again kneeling beside her on the floor.

Regina smiles and takes her hands. "Close your eyes."

She begins to focus on him again, easier to concentrate now that he has pissed her off more recently. She finds him almost immediately, barely out of the building.

"Have you found him again?"

She nods, trying her hardest to focus on him and not the loud, excited hum of her magic — and she definitely tries to ignore the fact that it only gets louder when Killian sits down beside her, his hand resting gently on her knee, outrightly ignoring Regina's order to stay across the room.

(Regina doesn't seem to care as much when she realizes it makes Emma's magic stronger, either.)

"Focus on him, on all the anger you have towards him, and draw a circle around yourself with that energy. Make it as big as you want, as big as you can, and once you have your circle, once you can feel your circle, release all that energy, and it will protect you."

Slowly, she sucks in a deep breath, and then does just that: releases her anger towards him out into the world, into the largest circle she can muster in her imaginary bird's-eye view of Berkshire, of England, of Europe, just as she also releases her breath.

She doesn't feel any different, she realizes, slowly opening her eyes. Both Regina and Killian are watching her intently, but she is not sure what to do, what to say. She feels exactly the same.

Okay, that's not exactly true. She can still feel the screaming surge of her magic running through her, more obvious in this moment than it has ever been. She feels like maybe she can do anything with it, a thought that still startles her a bit because of her unfamiliarity with it — but if she just did  _ that,  _ then maybe she really is capable of anything. 

And then, just as the surging begins to slow, begins to quiet, she feels her energy fade away, suddenly both lightheaded and exhausted, and she is thankful for Killian sitting so closely beside her, since it allows her to lean into him instead of holding herself up. 

“Am I supposed to feel this tired?” she asks, not even meaning to pair the question with the yawn that immediately follows it. 

A soft smile passes over Regina’s face, but it doesn’t stay there long, gone even before she starts to push herself up off the floor. “Yes, that’s normal until you get used to using your magic on a regular basis, especially since you really exerted yourself today. But you should be proud of yourself and the progress you made today.” 

Emma nods, not sure that she can find the strength to put what she is feeling into words, grateful for Killian as he thanks her for both of them before she leaves. 

But when she leaves behind an unsettling silence in the apartment, half-formed thoughts that Emma’s mind is too tired to put in the right order, but things that she knows Killian needs to hear. 

When she turns to him, he is already watching her, scanning her features for some sort of answer. “Killian,” she whispers, but it’s all she can say before he shakes his head at her, reaching up to tuck a piece of hair that has fallen out of her ponytail behind her ear before curling his arm around her back. 

“I know you’ll say what you need to say when you’re ready. For now, we should get you to bed.” 

“Thank you,” she manages as he pulls her up off the floor, tucking his arm around her waist so she can lean on him as he leads her into her bedroom, and she is asleep before he finishes pulling the blankets up to cover her. But even in her sleep, she feels the soft kiss he presses against her temple before he turns away, and it brings a soft smile to her face that doesn’t disappear until long after he shuts the door behind him. 

▫️▪️▫️▪️⭐▪️▫️▪️▫️

It takes Emma exactly twenty-four days to get her thoughts together. She almost breaks down before that, but every time she tries to put her words together, her fear comes creeping back, slithering between her bones until it is all she can feel. 

_ True Love.  _ Absolute bullshit. They have to be together —  _ why?  _ Because the universe decided, four hundred years ago, that she was going to be Killian Jones’ True Love. How does that even make sense? Did the universe know that she was going to exist?  _ How?  _ What if she had never been born? What if her life had gone differently — if her parents had wanted her, if Neal hadn’t been an absolute jackass, if she had fallen in love with someone else? Would he have remained a statue forever? Would he have had a different True Love, if Emma’s life hadn’t brought her to Berkshire? And even with everything that’s happened, what if one day he decides that what the universe wanted isn’t good enough for him — that  _ she  _ isn’t good enough for him? 

She’s afraid.  _ Terribly  _ afraid that one day, Killian will no longer want to be with her, but thus far, it hasn’t been a fear that she has been able to voice. 

But tonight —  _ Christmas Eve _ , for Christ’s sake — the thought that hasn’t left her mind for two months now is proving to be the least of her worries. Because, as she looks at the clock over the stove for the millionth time since she got home an hour ago, she’s terrified for a whole different reason. 

He’s supposed to be here. He told her the night before that the bar was closing at 2, and that he would be home around three. 

But the clock now reads a quarter to six, and the only reason she hasn’t lost the (very few) contents of her stomach is because she’s taught herself to steady her breath and fight to keep it down since med school. Her heart pounds in her throat, her head, her stomach. Her calming breath is not just to stop her stomach from turning, but also in hopes of keeping her mind off the worst-case scenarios, because in her mind, he’s either dead or decided to leave and never come back. 

There has to be some sort of psychoanalytic bullshit that explains that, something about her being abandoned as a child and always needing to keep herself protected from going through that kind of hurt again. 

Mary Margaret would know. Her degree is in psychology. All Emma has ever done was write some sort of paper about the formation of the Ego, but Mary Margaret practically minored in Freud. 

That’s beside the point, though. She’s just trying to keep her mind away from the picture of Killian dead in a gutter somewhere. 

Because she’s in love with him. She wants to know that he’s safe, wants him to come…  _ home.  _

Worrying her thumbnail against her front teeth, she thinks about that, thinks about  _ home _ . When was the last time she had a real home? Because it certainly wasn’t during her childhood, any of the foster homes and foster families. And it wasn’t with Neal. Could it have even been in college, in the dorms and apartments she shared with Belle, Ruby and Mary Margaret? None of those places have ever felt like a home. But this? This  _ feels  _ like a home. 

Killian feels like a home. 

She is pulled out of her own mind by a key in the lock of the door, and it takes all she has to stay in her seat instead of running towards him, especially once he actually comes through the door. He’s absolutely drenched, head to toe, in what she assumes is a half-melted version of the slush that has been falling from the sky all day. 

Absolutely drenched, but with a bouquet of roses clutched in his hand, smiling at her even as he shakes some of the slush out of his hair. She recognizes the silver cellophane wrapped around the bouquet as the personalized one from the stand she passes on her way home from the hospital, the one she told Killian a few weeks’ back always has the most beautiful looking flowers. 

The one that’s out of his way home from work, but that she has never seen closed, even when she worked on Thanksgiving or was walking home after midnight. 

“Hello, love,” he says, closing the door behind her. “Sorry I’m so late, Will wanted my help decorating the bar for Christmas for the party he’s holding tomorrow, I realized I should have texted you, but I forgot to charge my phone last night, and I—” 

She holds up her hands, smiling warmly at him. “Killian, really, it’s okay.” 

“I didn’t mean to cause you any fear, I just—” 

At this, she pushes herself off the chair and crosses the living room, wrapping her arms around his middle and resting her cheek against his shoulder, not even caring how wet his henley makes her cheek. 

He’s home. He’s safe. 

And —  _ holy shit —  _ she absolutely wants to kiss him. She wants to take the bouquet out of his hand so he can hold her and press her lips against his. 

But for all of the epiphanies she’s had recently, all of the personal conclusions she has come to, this, for some reason, is the hardest to deal with. She feels the smile fade from her face, useless against the ever-growing dread weighing down her chest.

Two seconds. That's how long she can stand to look at him for, by her count — both of which he spends smiling sweetly down at her, probably thinking about how much he loves her — before it's all too much for her. 

She takes one step back, and then another, softly mumbling, "I'm glad you're home safe," before turning away from him and walking into her bedroom without another word. 

But that doesn't stop him from coming after her, knocking softly on her bedroom door after a few moments. "Emma, love, are you alright?" 

She hates that. The term of endearment is enough, isn't it? But when he pairs of with her name, it makes the smallest shiver creep down her spine. Because he doesn't just do it when he wants something from her, or when he did something he regrets — like Neal. The only time Neal ever called her anything other than her name was when he did something wrong. 

But Killian? Killian calls her 'love' on a regular basis. Okay, sure, he calls everyone love, it's just part of the way he talks. But for as long as she's known him (which really isn't that long, all things considered, but she still thinks she has a pretty good handle on the type of person he is), she is the  _ only  _ person that he has referred to with both their name and the endearment, and sometimes at the oddest times: trying to get her attention, looking for the remote, wondering what she wants for dinner. 

When she's upset. 

It never fails to bring a smile to her face, even now, as she stands on the other side of her bedroom door having a crisis. 

Maybe she doesn’t hate it. Maybe she loves it. Maybe she loves  _ him _ — and yet, every time she thinks about voicing her feelings, feelings that she  _ knows  _ he will reciprocate, that same fear comes creeping up her entire soul, the fear that one day, Killian will leave her just like everyone else has. 

It’s not until he does it again —  _ “Emma, love, please talk to me”  _ — that she is pulled back to the reality of her situation, of Killian on the other side of the door, of the tears streaming down her cheeks without her permission. 

She’s an idiot. A god damn fucking idiot. It’s  _ Christmas Eve,  _ for Christ’s sake, and she’s locked herself in her room. 

This isn’t the first time. She remembers the first Christmas she “celebrated” with her first foster family that kept her for more than a few weeks, the Millers, which was possibly one of the worst times of her life. But she promised herself that night that she would never put as much faith in anyone as she did in the Millers. And that she would never get that upset over trivial things — because you can’t be let down if your expectations are already incredibly low. 

She lived with that mindset for years. She even still sometimes reminded herself of it when she was with Neal — because when it came to low expectations, Neal was the lowest. 

But Killian? Killian went beyond even the expectations she dreamed of having, and even through everything he has done to prove himself worthy of her trust, there was always that nagging feeling in the back of her mind that he would just be another person to let her down. 

“Emma, I can tell you’re upset about something, and I may not be able to make you talk to me, but I can stay right here until you decide you’re ready.” She hears him move on the other side of the door: the shuffling of his feet against the carpet, the soft shushing of his shirt against the door as she assumes he slowly drops to the ground, and the dull  _ thud  _ of his head falling back against the surface behind him. 

Not for the first time, she’s amazed by just incredible he is. How sweet he is. She doesn’t believe that anyone can be perfect, but he certainly has the fewest flaws of anyone she has ever met — and her best friend since high school is practically an angel walking on earth. Most of the flaws he does have come from being cursed and turned into a statue for four hundred years, though, so she can’t really be mad at him for them. 

None of this helps the fact that she has no idea what to say to him. 

So they sit in silence for a while, almost calmed by the presence of the other. For every good part of their relationship that she can think of, there is also a bone-chilling fear that comes to her mind right behind it, knocking her back and forth in her own mind until she is sure that she is falling to her death. 

And then her phone rings, and it’s Mary Margaret. 

“Fuck,” she whispers, and she can practically  _ feel _ the way Killian’s whole body pricks up at the sound of her voice. She can’t  _ not  _ answer it — it  _ is _ Christmas Eve, Mary Margaret’s favorite day of the year, plus she’s due at the beginning of February, so there is the slightest chance it’s not just her best friend calling to see how her holiday is going. “Hey, Margs,” she says, trying to put some semblance of happiness into her voice, though it all seems to have been drained out of her. She figures the least she can do is share the conversation with the man sitting on the other side of her door, so she puts it on speakerphone. 

“Merry Christmas, Emma!” she yells, and Killian smiles. If anyone can help Emma through the crisis she is currently drowning in, it has to be Mary Margaret. “You’re off work, right? You said you should be home by 4 at the latest, and that was a few hours ago, right? You’re 5 hours ahead of us, and it’s 1 here, so you’re—” 

Emma stops her before the time change math makes her head explode. “Yeah, you’re right, I’m home.” 

“Okay, great! Great! So what are you doing for Christmas? Are you and Killian celebrating anywhere? I’m so glad you’re able to be home and not at the hospital tonight.” The rushed speed of her words isn’t completely abnormal, but there is something about it paired with the chipper tone in her voice that worries Emma. 

“Yeah, it’s great, you know how much I love Christmas,” she says dryly, but before Mary Margaret can respond on the other end of the line, Emma changes the subject: “Is everything alright there, Margs? You seem a little more spastic than normal.” 

She can hear the breath sucked in on the other end of the line. “No, no, I’m fine, it’s just—” she groans, a sound that makes Emma believe that it’s not all  _ fine _ . “Just some Braxton-Hicks, you know? They’re just a little stronger than last time, and David suggested I do something to get my mind off of them while he gets ready to go to his mom’s tonight, so I —  _ ugh, shoot _ — I called you a little earlier than I expected to just to see how things were going and if there was any new news that you wanted to divulge to your best friend.” 

“Nothing that I haven’t told you already,” she says, trying to hold back the roll of her eyes. It doesn’t work very well. She’s going to leave it at that, but she has another idea, instead: she knows she’s talking to Mary Margaret, and that nothing she can say will be news to her oldest friend, and even though she might not be able to say everything she wants to Killian, she can say it to Mary Margaret. Killian listening to her through the door is just a bonus. 

“So nothing new, then?” 

Slowly, she breathes in through her nose and holds it for a few moments before releasing it. “Come on, you know how it is for me. I mean, I know how I feel, this whole  _ True Love _ bullshit be damned, because there’s no way to deny the connection between us, but, like, it’s all almost a little too much. Everyone else in my life has decided that I’m not enough, that I’m not worth the effort of keeping around. You’re the exception, of course, but what if — I mean, I know that I want him to be an exception, but what if he’s not? What if we enter into this relationship and I think things are going really well until one day he decides that I’m not enough? That he doesn’t love me enough?” 

On the other side of the door, Killian is fairly sure he feels his heart stop beating. Is that really what she thinks? After everything that he has done for her, is that really what she thinks he’s going to do? He knows it has practically nothing to do with him, that she’s been let down and hurt in the past, but he still doesn’t understand how she thinks  _ he  _ could do that. 

But it’s not about him. It’s about her, about her fears and the hope that she will one day be able to overcome them. 

He doesn’t see through the fact that she is saying all of this when she knows that he can hear her. She may not be saying this to his face, but it’s basically the next best thing. 

“Have you tried telling him this? I know you think he’s going to hurt you, but what if he doesn’t?” 

At this, Killian smiles, but he hears Emma’s head fall back against the door. 

A few moments of silence pass between them all, and Mary Margaret is the one to break it. “It’s Christmas, Emma. Have a little faith. True Love is a big deal, nothing to shy away from.” 

“I’d put more faith in Tinkerbell than I ever would in Christmas, you should know that.” 

“Not every family is the Millers, and I can assure you that Killian is nothing like Neal. If you’re going to put your faith in anything, put your faith in him."

At this, Emma finally smiles. She feels much better, perhaps even enough to open the door to Killian and her relationship, both physically and literally. 

Mary Margaret groans, the first one in a while, and she suddenly remembers the reason her friend called her in the first place. “How are you feeling, Margs?” 

The laugh on the other end of the line is incredibly pained, but there is nothing she can do about it. “A little bit better, I guess.” 

“Honey, are you almost ready?” she hears David call from another room. 

“It’s time to go, Em. Think about what I said, alright? You deserve to be happy, and I think Killian wants to be the one to make you happy.” 

Emma hears Killian let out a soft chuckle on the other side of the door, because they both know that she’s right. 

“Merry Christmas,” Emma says, and when she releases her breath, she actually feels as if a weight was lifted from her shoulders. 

“Merry Christmas. Talk to you soon, okay?” 

“Yeah, of course. Bye.” 

When she hangs up the phone, she is overwhelmed by the silence that surrounds her, picking out every little noise that the apartment makes: the creaking of the walls, the wind against the windows, every movement Killian makes against the door. 

He’s still not sure what to say. If he should even say anything. Emma just revealed all of that, not quite to him, but she didn’t hide it from him, either. 

When she does start speaking, her voice is so soft that he almost cannot hear it through the door, and it almost startles him, but definitely confuses him, because it seems to make no sense. 

“When I was eight years old, I was adopted by Tim and Mary Miller, who had two biological children of their own, a three and a five year old. They adopted me in January, and another boy, a seven-year-old named Matthew, in April. Even before Matt joined us, they were the family that I stayed with the longest, for more than just a few weeks, and the year I spent with them was the longest I spent anywhere until I aged out of the system, the only family I celebrated a birthday with. I was really happy with them, even though they paid a lot more attention to their biological kids than they did to me and Matt. 

“And as the oldest, I was expected not just to receive presents, but also to wrap the presents for the other three children. Every other Christmas I celebrated was at the group home, so I’d never really had a family, and I definitely never gotten more than the two or three presents that the group home could afford for each of us, but I had always heard stories of parents who spoil their children on Christmas. By the time I had spent a few months with the Millers, I thought that maybe I finally found a home, a family that loved me enough to buy me presents for Christmas. 

“But when I snuck into the basement to start wrapping the presents without my other siblings knowing, I found two large boxes filled with presents for the two youngest — the biological children — and two presents each for me Matt. It took everything in me not to cry that night, and I distracted myself with wrapping, but the upset manifested itself on Christmas Eve, when other family members showed up with presents — for the two youngest children, but not for me and Matt. I spent the rest of the night in my room crying, and was back in the group home by New Year’s Eve.” 

Somehow, he can tell that this is not the end of what she wants to say to him. 

“I’d been hurt before, sent back to the group homes before, but for some reason, this hurt more than any of them. Getting sent back became something I got used to, but I think getting let down by the Millers hurt so much because I’d put my faith in them. So I told myself that I would never put that much faith in someone ever again, a promise that I kept until I found Neal, until I thought I found something different with him, and then — well, you saw where that got me.” 

“Emma,” he starts, but she still cuts him off. 

“Wait, please, I’m almost done.” 

He snaps his mouth shut. 

“I’m so afraid, Killian. I’m so afraid of so many things, but more than anything else, I’m afraid that someday, you’re going to wake up in the middle of the happy little life we can build together and realize that maybe you don’t love me as much as you thought you did, that maybe I’m no longer worth the effort you have to put into being with me, and you’ll just walk out the door, leave me behind for something better.” 

She stops again, and he’s pretty sure that this is his chance to speak what he’s been wanting to for weeks — but at the same time, he doesn’t want to speak over her again. When she remains silent for a few more moments, he practically whispers, “Can I say something now?” 

He can tell by the way she laughs that she is crying, but she’s done with what she was trying to say. “Yeah, sure, go ahead.” 

“I love you, Emma. Even if the universe didn’t bring us together as True Loves, I would love you. I knew that we were meant to be together from that very first breath I took, but I have spent every day since then learning about you, learning who you are, the type of person you are, and it’s only made me more sure that you are the only person I would ever be able to love as much as I love you. You’re the reason I’m here, and I owe everything to you, literally owe you my life. I can never feel the same way about another than I do about you.” 

This time, when she feels the tears rolling down her cheek, they’re no longer because of the sadness that she has felt deep in her bones since that terrible Christmas. Instead, flowing through her, unhindered by fear or pain or dread, is hope. 

Is love. 

She stands up, much more awkwardly and making much more noise than she expected, and when she pulls open the door, Killian almost loses his balance from where he is still sitting when she pulls the door open. How didn’t he hear her get up? 

“Sorry,” she mumbles, reaching down to help him back to his feet, but for as embarrassed as she feels, he just smiles at her. 

“No worries, darling, I’m just glad you’ve come out from hiding.” 

She has not let go of his hand, but has also not yet raised her eyes to meet his. She just bared her whole heart, her whole  _ soul _ , to him, and she knows that as soon as she locks eyes with him, she is going to get lost in the vast oceans that she finds within them, and that he will continue to be the most understanding person she has ever met. She’s still not quite sure how to feel about that.

“Did you — did you mean all that?” she asks, even though she already knows the answer. 

He lets go of her hand, and for the briefest moment, she expects him to take it all back, to admit that this whole thing was fake — to do just as everyone else has done, and she feels her heart begin to rise into her throat, the beginnings of her stomach turning. 

But instead, she feels the soft touch of his index finger under her chin, gently pulling her head up and forcing her eyes to meet his. 

Just as she expected, they have never been bluer, back to their regular brightness, and she feels herself beginning to get lost in them for just a moment until he speaks. 

“Of course I meant it all, Emma. I love you, you have to know that’s true by now.” 

She tries to nod, a slightly awkward movement with his finger still tucked under her chin, and she wipes the tears out of her eyes with the palms of her hands. 

“I do. I — I’ve known for a while, and I just…” She pulls her bottom lip up between her teeth, worrying it for a moment. Killian’s eyes never leave her face. “It’s nothing now, and I’m sorry it took me so long to see that.” 

He presses his lips against her forehead. He’s warm and soft and  _ he loves her _ . “No apologies, love. I promised you that I would wait as long as I needed to for you to reciprocate how I knew I felt from the first moment I saw you, so I’m just happy that I don’t have to wait anymore.” 

Emma surprises herself. She smiles. She sets her hand against his cheek, feeling the soft yet prickly stubble that he has started to leave there. And then she kisses him. 

He seems just as surprised by it as she is, though at least one of them probably should have seen it coming. It’s soft, at first, as soft as his lips were against her forehead, until it quickly becomes more, weeks’ worth of passion and emotion no longer bottled up, but rising to the surface all at once. Lips, tongue, teeth, and hands all coming together as they learn the smallest details about the other. 

It almost surprises her how much she enjoys kissing Killian Jones.  _ Almost.  _ But what does surprise her is how kissing him — that giving in to what the universe has built between them — makes her  _ feel _ . And not in the way that her heart pounds in her chest, how his hand pressed against her cheek sends shockwaves against her skin. No, what gets her attention is the way her magic  _ screams  _ within her when his lips meet hers, the way she feels it not only in every inch of her body, but even beyond that, how she somehow feels it spread out from inside her and throughout the room. 

Because she  _ loves  _ him. It may have taken her this long to realize it, but there’s no going back on it now, no way she would ever want to. Because, more than anything else, her magic reacts to him, to his hand in her hair and his arm wrapped around her waist and his tongue as it presses deeper into her mouth. She feels like she’s floating, lighter than she has ever been — and then he lifts her up, her legs wrapping around his waist, and she really is floating. 

Because she’s happy —  _ they’re _ happy. Happy, together, and in love. And that’s all that matters. 


End file.
